You have raised some interesting points.

Oddly enough, I have seen this debate in accessibility circles too.

The old stance was that we should provide one content to EVERYONE and then style the content different for different devices.

After doing testing with people with users cognitive disabilities and learning difficulties it became clear that these users were not being serviced very well at all with if they were given the same content as others.

In some cases, these users needed specifically written content (simplified to key concepts) and in some cases completely reworked content (simple flash files or images instead of text). This is especially true for users with severe cognitive impairment

The same argument could be true for mobile devices. One could argue that content should be the same for everyone and that we simply change the css via media types for different devices.

However, like cognitive impaired users, mobile users may have distinctly different needs (quicker download, less graphics, simpler functions, abbreviated content etc) to those using other devices.

If that is the case, then we could easily justify creating a full rich site for most users, and a mobile-specific site for mobile devices.

The iphone site is a totally different concern. The news team have decided to build a site specifically for this device. While it could be considered the reverse of standards based development (building for a specific device rather than all devices) there may have been other motivations that were acceptable to the News team (fun, marketing etc)

An interesting debate

Seriously. You should make sites for mobile devices according to standards, and test in a reasonable assortment of UA:s. Period.

You should not make sites for the iPhone – and that includes the URL. Or is there an nokian95.news.com.au URL or operamini.news.com.au or operamobile.news.com.au. No. Case closed.

The web standards movement sees a shiny white phone and starts to sell its soul! “But iPhone users are our target”. I’ve heard it before… “MSIE users are our target…”

maybe the seminar will be great. If Tim and Pete are Ok with having iphone as part of an URL, I’d say they are disqualified to answer the first question, though.