Do Web pages for phones have to be Apps?

Question

I do not own a mobile phone that is web enabled, and I never designed a web page for phones, but now due to the steep learning curve, I need a quick fix.
Reading the help in Dreamweaver 5.5, there is lots of information about creating the best  mobile sites, though at the moment, I don't understand a lot of it - but that's my fault.
However, when I use someone else's phone to look at most existing sites that are just designed for computers to view, the phone has facilities that make the sites available.
Lots of zooming and such which is a pain, but you usually can view them.
It occurred to me that perhaps there is a position mid way between a stock web site and a fully fledged phone app could be a stop gap solution until the whole mess of media queries, and other phone related stuff is understood.
My suggested solution is as follows:
Provide seperate sets of pages for both types at suitable sizes ( max 320 wide for mobiles).
Keep all graphics for phone pages to a minimum size and well optimised to allow for quick page loading.
1.On the index page of the site, put a large link to the phone pages and one to the computer pages so that its easily seen by phone users
2. Design the index page and all phone pages so that the content would fit on a 320 pixel wide screen.
3. Have the first page after the index purely as the menu screen, with a list of links.
4. Each link leads to a deck of stacked pages that that are serially linked back and forth, with a "return to first page" on each one, with the navigation being at the bottom (or the top?) of the page.
To view pages, the phone user would have to select the phone link on the site's index page, then select from the menu to get to the first page of a topic. He can then flick through the linked set of pages and go back to the menu from any. The pages would fit most mobile phones, and no phone specific stuff wopuld be needed.
I appreciate that this method would not provide the most sparkling of mobile web sites, and would require two sets of pages, which is a maintenance problem, but it ought to help phone users to surf my site until I can get up to speed with the mobile stuff.
Question is - would it work?
Your comments please?
Howard Walker

Answer 1

mhollis55 wrote:
Frankly, if you simply do a website using HTML5, you're set for a mobile device. And Dreamweaver 5 and 5.5 both give you code-hinting and definitions for HTML5/CSS3.
jQuery would be the "app" side of that, though if you are really looking to make an application that works on a mobile phone, your best method is to do it in Flash and then compile it using Air. Adobe has a complete discussion of what's required here.
Hi mhollis55
Could you tell me why you describe the jQuery mobile framework as an app?
The framework uses html5, css3 and ARIA, and is designed to make the creation of mobile friendly web pages easier for those who do not wish to commit themselves to learning all the mobile specific features required by modern smartphones and now even supports many of the older smartphone devices, see - http://jquerymobile.com/
PZ