Facebook on the iPhone - in a browser near you. Scott Holdeman

Have you seen the recent iPhone advertisement on TV featuring a custom Facebook site!? Well if you haven’t - you can check it out here. The iPhone and Apple in general are doing amazing things with interaction design and now it seems Facebook has teamed up with them and created a fantastic web-based interface. “Who cares” you ask “I don’t have an iPhone.” - well neither do I, but an estimated 10 million of us are projected to by the end of the year. 10 million users! After the initial wow factor after seeing the ad, I put on my “practical” hat (I wear a lot of hats, both literally and figuratively) and said to myself - “Hey self - are we going back to the days of creating browser specific web-sites - well that sucks!” However, 10 million people are using perhaps the most inspiring web device that any of us have seen - maybe it’s time to throw caution into the wind and consider creating custom sites just for this tool. The cool factor alone might be worth it - but browsing a newspaper or reserving a car would be so sweet on one of these things with a little iPhone customization. I started thinking - how are they doing it? How is it that Facebook can look so different on an iPhone - what’s the secret? Well, I honestly haven’t done all my research (sorry), but what I did find surprised me a little. I can actually open the iPhone interface in my regular browser! I typically use Firefox and Safari, but I checked ie and sure enough - it’s broken (what did you expect?). Anyway, if you are on a standards compliant browser check it out: Facebook on an iPhone - but not an iPhone (I’m taking the liberty of resizing the window for you to approximate an iPhone). Granted you have to use your mouse instead of you finger to navigate the thing, but it still seems very cool to me. Could we do this for our clients? I sure don’t see why not.

• Posted In User Experience