Mobile website: Oxford University

I was quietly minding my own business again today when this popped up on Twitter from @sboneham:

Hmm, a mobile version of Oxford University’s website? Very intriguing. So, I tried it out on my iPhone and here’s what you see;

Click to see full iPhone version

Wow, really nice, great icons, good colour scheme (if a little mono-chromatic with all that blue everywhere) … but I like it. All the links go to pages that are designed to compliment this first page, these are;

• News; dynamic and easy to read
• Weather; nice touch!
• Webcams are good (look at the “Earth Science Cam #1”; what a building site!!)
• Contact details easily searchable,
• etc

So, a good site then? Yes, but …

Now here’s what I was thinking would happen  (putting my web developers hat back on after a few years without it) … there’s a normal version of the website that you’ll see if you go to www.ox.ac.uk. If you access it using a mobile device (say, iPhone) you will be redirected to the mobile content version. Yes?

No.

You get the same page you would normally get by accessing the website on any desktop browser.

Click to see full iPhone version

A shame, as if they can get that sorted it would be seamless and unique and highly ‘cool’. I don’t know how it’s done elsewhere, but I’ve got it working on this blog (WordPress plugin called WPTouch) so I know it can be done.

In fact, only minutes after seeing the above tweet, I saw this one to Mashable’s website – “A Guide to Mobile Web Design Tips and Tricks” – that has plenty of links and tips for you to do exactly this yourself.

Do you know of any other Institution, not only a University, that has been able to get this working yet, to truly engage the mobile browsers? If you do, please let me know as I’m keep to see who is doing what out there.