Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Tips and tricks, Internet Tools, iPhone
Google creates iPhone-specific demo to show off API [Updated]
Google, says Scoble, has created a brand new just-for-iPhone demo page for their search engine-- yes, apparently they're still doing search. I used it within my browser (using my standard search engine test word: "Batman"), and it seemed to work just fine. It's all Javascript, as well, so it's fast and simple. The one drawback is that you can't actually go back after you've done a search (since it all loads in the same window), but it's Google, so odds are you'll find what you're looking for right away.But the problem with this goes right back to what Scott was talking about the other day-- we aren't supposed to be getting half the web on the iPhone, we're supposed to be getting the real web. In this case, there's not much to complain about-- this really is Google, minus the extra content and the ads. However, the links actually go to regular browser windows (not iPhone formatted sites), and if you hit "More Results" at the bottom of the page, it takes you to a normal, full-screen Google page anyway. So what's the point? Yes, this is just a demo, but why bother making an iPhone specific page in the first place? iPhone users should be able to browse to the Google homepage like everyone else.
Thanks, Josh!
Update: This page is not quite what it seems-- it's not actually an iPhone version of Google. A Google spokesperson contacted us to say that it's actually a Google demo for how web developers can use the Google AJAX search API in their iPhone apps. That explains why it's not much more than the main Google page, and why it has no ads. It's not designed to replace the Google main page (although, as a side bonus, that's a pretty good one). Instead, it was created by the Google API devs to show off how the AJAX search API can be used to make apps for the iPhone.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Mo said 9:22PM on 7-23-2007
This probably has something to do with the fact that Google is apparently petrified about applying web standards to the main google.com pages.
Google could, without very much hassle at all, serve a different stylesheet to narrow-width devices.
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fog city dave said 9:32PM on 7-23-2007
Mike, have you used an iPhone? Of course you can use the regular Google page, just like everyone else. It works beautifully on the iPhone. But this is even nicer, and kudos to Google for doing it. Just because the iPhone can render and navigate regular-size web pages beautifully, does not mean that it's a bad thing to have people design pages specifically for the iPhone, or that somehow that makes the iPhone an inferior experience, or something less than advertised. Regular web pages on the iPhone are very impressive, but iPhone-specific pages are just that much sweeter. The beauty for iPhone users is that they don't have to choose one over the other.
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Mike said 10:18PM on 7-23-2007
A normal web page should flow to fit a smaller screen. But the iPhone screws that up by presenting itself as a 900 pixel wide screen, then shrinking everything down to fit. For pages that don't wrap well, Apple's approach makes the pages usable, but for well designed pages that can wrap, it screws it up. Zooming in makes the text larger, makes you have to scroll in 2 dimensions, not just 1.
What's annoying is that Apple touts the iPhone's Safari as a "real" web browser, but people are swapping the URLs of mobile-friendly sites that are more usable since they were designed to accomodate the small screens.
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boss sauce said 10:20PM on 7-23-2007
Unfortunately, Google still won't let me see the regular (read: "useful") version of their calendar page on my iPhone...:(
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Mike Schramm said 11:30PM on 7-23-2007
Hey Dave, I don't have an iPhone, but I have used one (and used Google on one). I know that Google can be used just as well without this special page, and that's why I'm asking why we need it at all. Apple touted the iPhone as the real web, not a special iPhone web, and yet it seems like people are falling into the old habits, and creating yet another shape of web to match the iPhone. For web designers, that's got to be frustrating.
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Robert Boyle said 10:43PM on 7-23-2007
If the iPhone formatted pages don't specifically exclude non-iPhone users, I have no problems with them. If you've ever used EDGE, you know that the wireless web is a pain in the ass for non-formatted pages. There's nothing wrong with options and that's all that I'm seeing so far. You seem to see closed windows, where most people see open doors.
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fog city dave said 10:56PM on 7-23-2007
Mike, that is my whole point... this shouldn't be frustrating at all for designers because they can choose to offer special iPhone pages or not. It's up to them. The iPhone works great either way. Do you think Google did this because people were banging down their door demanding it? No. They didn't do this out of frustration, they did it as a special service for iPhone users, by their own choice.
And the other Mike... so, you're complaining that Apple presents web pages as they are? You'd prefer it if they only presented 320 pixels so that the vast majority of web pages would be cut off? I seriously doubt you would prefer that out on the "real" web. I know I wouldn't.
My god, people, it's a phone. Of course, there are compromises that need to be made, and Apple made the right choices overall, all things considered. Don't worry, though. I'm sure that tomorrow some other tiny little perceived iPhone flaw will pop up for you guys to grouse about.
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Mike Piontek said 11:20PM on 7-23-2007
#3: I think if you shrunk your browser to 320x480 pixels you'd find web browsing to be a serious pain in the ass, and a lot of sites would look awful. Apple's solution works well because you can see the whole page at first, and find what you want to zoom in on pretty quickly, rather than having to scroll around the entire page in two directions.
If you weren't aware already, any web designer can specify a default viewer width and even minimum/maximum zoom levels. So if your site will work great in a 320x480 window, or somewhere in between, it's an easy fix.
I will say though, it would be nice to have the option to disable style sheets, especially if you could do it on a per-site basis. Then you would have more pages that really would flow to fit the screen, and you could speed things up over EDGE.
#5: It can display regular pages just fine, as you but for things you access frequently it can be very useful to have an iPhone optimized version. When you do a Google search you have to zoom in to read anything and/or tilt the phone, which is an extra step. You also have download speed to consider--EDGE really isn't bad in my experience, but a slimmed down version of the page can get you to what you're looking for super fast. You've also got the issue of links close together being difficult to press without having to zoom in really close... and sometimes it's just nice to have a site that fits with the iPhone design.
An optimized version just makes it nicer to use. It'd be the same with a huge and/or super high resolution display... In that case you'd want a wider page, higher resolution images, smaller text relative to the layout, etc. Or look at it this way: you can run Windows apps on a Mac these days, and they work great... but most Mac users would much rather have Mac-native apps, wouldn't they? They run better on a Mac, they look better, they fit in with the way you're used to working better.
None of this really has any bearing on the iPhone's ability to use the real web. A page or app tailored to a specific device is always going to be nicer to use that something that's one-size-fits-all. But since the iPhone is very well made for browsing regular sites, you're not shut off all the pages that AREN'T tailored for the iPhone.
I really don't understand what the complaint is. It's certainly not a bad thing unless a site forces you into an iPhone version, especially if it has less features. Some sites may do this, but not many. And most web designers don't even need to worry about it.
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David said 12:00AM on 7-24-2007
I think this is great. Now if only you could specify what search page the google search box points to from iPhone, that'd be great too. I could care less about the Adsense stuff.
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fog city dave said 12:24AM on 7-24-2007
David, the link is here:
http://www.google.com/uds/samples/iphone/isearch.html
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jalessi said 9:13AM on 7-24-2007
The iPhone *can* browse normal websites. I have not found one yet that does not look well on my iPhone. But iPhone formatted pages are much easier to use and usually can be provided in parallel to the full page without too much effort. And if you are stuck using an edge data connection it makes things much faster too. I applaud the creation of iPhone specific web pages and I also love the fact that the iPhone can browse any page.
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Ian said 9:59AM on 7-24-2007
Google could easily serve the same page to different devices - CSS afford simple techniques (in the link attributes or via media queries) to do so. Google's inability to do it is either deliberate fractionation of the web, ignorance or technical inability to overcome the horrendous code they use.
For non web-developers: why do you have to juggle 2 different URLs each offering the same service with different twiddles - developers can fix this to give you *one* address that can adapt to the device that views it, but they don't. Instead of being grateful for a technically incompetent solution, ask for a real one.
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B deR West said 3:39PM on 7-24-2007
Why do I even need to visit Google.com to input a search, when Google searching is built into iPhone's Safari?
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Mike said 8:21PM on 7-24-2007
The problem with the crippled Safari in the iPhone is that it doesn't give you the option to view in a 480 oixel wide window ( not 320x480 as you could scroll down ) If it was a real standard you'd be able to zoom in on text w/o having the text size change. Real web browsers will let you set your font size. Bigger font, less words on the page, smaller and you get more words. iPhone's Safari breaks this by grabbing chunks of paragraphs that are bigger than you can read.
This forces you to scroll in 2 dimensions when a real brower would have let you scroll down only. Add this to no dedicated scroll area and you're fingering the text that you're trying to view. Way too many times while doing this slip and slide scrolling I'd activate a link, jumping to a new page while I'm still trying to read the the first page.
Yes, being able to grab a large page that doesn't flow well ( unless it's Flash ) is handy. But screwing up pages that would work fine is annoying. That's why so many people are running to opimized pages. In some cases these pages avoid problems caused by the small screen, but in other cases they avoid problems caused by the iPhone pretending to be a large screen.
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