Perception of Narrow Web Pages on a Mobile Phone

Viewing web pages on a small screen is a topical issue on mobile phones. PDA devices have provided access to the full web for a while, but recently web browsers have also become available for mobile phones. We conducted a study on how ordinary users perceive familiar web pages on the 176x208-pixel color display of a mobile phone. We used the commercial mobile browser that reformats web pages in a tall and narrow layout, using a server side proxy. We found that the users were delighted to have the web on a mobile phone and saw that narrow layout on a mobile phone is a surprisingly good way to view web pages. We also found some areas of improvement, such as providing the interesting content before the information that is often ignored on a large screen.