Vanderbilt University today unveiled an iPhone optimized version of its website. If you go to vanderbilt.edu on an iPhone or Touch, it will automatically reroute you to vanderbilt.edu/iphone/.
And what a handsome page it is. The University Web Communications team has done an excellent job. It’s not your usual blah gray or blue mobile site. While maintaining the minimalist style best suited to an iPhone, it manages to look very Vanderbilt — black with touches of gold and dark red.
As well as the home page and admissions, the top layers of the news, calendar, athletics, and several other sections have been optimized, and I expect more will come soon. It’s a great start and a very pleasant surprise.
8 comments ↓
Nicely done. I see Vanderbilt even has the equivalent of a favicon at:
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/iphoneVu.png
Instructions for creating web clip bookmark icons are at:
http://vjarmy.com/archives/2008/01/howto_iphone_webclip_icons.php
and at:
http://developer.apple.com/iphone/devcenter/designingcontent.html
Thanks, Mark! Just to be clear, I can’t take any credit for it — unless you count cheering them on.
Greetings AB -
Is the Vandy iphone page automatically coming up on your phone? It’s not coming up on my Touch. I can add /iphone to the URL though and see it quite nicely. Not sure what the issue is, looked at the source code. One possibility (which I would have to definitely explore further to confirm) is that Apple’s recommended use of media query does not appear to be used:
From Apple et al:
You can tailor the style of your webpages by providing a style sheet that adapts to iPhone. The CSS 3 media query allows you to do just that. There are several types of queries including print, handheld, and screen. iPhone ignores the print and handheld media queries because these types do not supply high-end content. So the screen query is what you need to use.
Ok, ok. Strike that. Redirecting to the Phone/Touch world can be achieved with javascript, PHP or pretty much anything. Once you’re there, grab some of the recommended css.
Judy — It’s still not auto-redirecting for you? It does on my iPhone. If it’s not for your Touch and is for my iPhone, then I bet it is a php sniffer.
Hi can someone try the touch again? i adjusted the javascript and i personally don’t have one to test against.
Thanks, Michael. All — Michael is the person who did this work. Keep up the great work! (I’ve passed your request on to a friend who has a Touch.)
Hmm. Surfed over to http://www.vanderbilt.edu on my touch & not seeing the mobile page.
I added a bit of info on targeting the 2 devices at
http://www.site-shack.com/blog/?p=22
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