Been playing with both N95 and iPhone in recent days and noticing that some websites look well on both, others look quite awful.

Should a site be designed specifically for mobiles? keeping it seperate from the main online site, or should it just be dealt with through CSS?

Depends on the site.

You can load up mobile or iphone specific css files to customise the content for that medium. I've been reading up on some guidelines for iphone specific designs recently - been testing sites on my ipod touch. The iphone really can handle a normal site if it's coded properly using div's and css. No specific file needed really.

I suppose it depends on how much traffic you are getting from mobile devices.

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David Behan
Web Design Ireland | Mortgages | Memorial Websites | Digital Printing

actually with the iphone there are limitations
In general, Safari on iPhone does not support any third-party plug-ins or features that require access to the file system. The following web technologies are not supported on iPhone:

* Modal dialogs

Don’t use window.showModalDialog() or window.print() in JavaScript.

* Mouse-over events

The user cannot “mouse-over” an element on iPhone. Therefore, Safari on iPhone translates mouseover events to mousedown events. Although a mouseover event may be sent before a mousedown event, you should not rely on mouseover events on iPhone. Use the mousedown event to implement your handlers.

* Hover styles

Since a mouseover event is sent only before a mousedown event, hover styles are displayed only if the user taps and holds a clickable element with a hover style. Read “Handling Events” for all the events generated by gestures on iPhone.

* Tooltips

Similar to hover styles, tooltips are not displayed unless the user taps and holds a clickable element with a tooltip.

* Java applets
* Flash

Don’t bring up JavaScript alerts that ask users to download Flash.

* SVG
* XSLT
* Plug-in installation
* Custom x.509 certificates
* WML

* File uploads and downloads

Safari on iPhone does not support file uploading, that is, <input type="file"> elements. If your webpage includes an input-file control, Safari on iPhone disables it.

Because iPhone does not support file downloads, do not prompt the user to download plug-ins like Flash on iPhone. See “Using the Safari on iPhone User Agent String” for how to detect Safari on iPhone.

By default, Safari on iPhone blocks pop-up windows. However, it is a preference that the user can change. To change the Safari settings, tap Settings followed by Safari. The Block Pop-ups setting appears in the Security section.

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Information for Unmarried Parents | blog | bash.org
I gotta gotta get away, get away from the human race
I don't know what I'll see, don't even know what I'll find
I don't know what to pack, never been to a trip at the mind

Im a mobile web developer. Its a totally different ball game. The biggest problem with developing for the mobile web is the vast amount of different devices that are going to view your page.

Different screensizes,css implementations (if at all),usually no javascript,older devices using wml (however xhtml-mp seems to be the winner) then there is the dodgy implementation of a lot of the operators wap gateways.

For example Vodafone thought it would be a good idea to strip out the user agent header in http requests, so the one way of serving content appropriately to the device is taken away from you.

At least if you know what phone it is you can transcode images on the fly to serve the best possible for that handset along with modified mark up if required.

But with all the headaches its very interesting to see how things are developing. Its a aspect of web development that is in its infancy at the moment

You would also be best checking out

http://pc.dev.mobi
http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/
http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/java/index.php

__________________
Information for Unmarried Parents | blog | bash.org
I gotta gotta get away, get away from the human race
I don't know what I'll see, don't even know what I'll find
I don't know what to pack, never been to a trip at the mind