Mobile-friendly web pages

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Google has announced that they are marking web pages as “mobile-friendly” in their search results. I was initially worried about this, because many websites have mobile-specific versions that are worse than their desktop versions on mobile devices. I also don’t like being auto-forwarded to mobile locations (e.g. from www.example.com to m.example.com), because it prevents URLs from being universal.


However, Google’s criteria for mobile-friendliness are reasonable: Pages must…



  • Avoid software that is not common on mobile devices, like Flash

  • Use text that is readable without zooming

  • Size content to the screen so users don't have to scroll horizontally or zoom

  • Place links far enough apart so that the correct one can be easily tapped


Google’s blog post gives tips for ensuring that your page is recognized as mobile-friendly. It seems like a similar approach could be used for checking whether pages are accessible.



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