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If you've ever used a mobile phone or PDA to surf the web, you've probably noticed that some sites render better than others on a small screen. That's because some web developers design special mobile versions of their pages. But there are also several web-based services that "mobilize" web sites by stripping some data and presenting you with a stripped down version of a web page.

Probably the most popular web-site mobilizing services are Google Mobile and Skweezer. Mowser is a less popular service, but it might be the best of the bunch. We first checked out Mowser earlier this year, but a recent article from Mowser creator Russel Beattie made us take another look.
Beattie says Google has a nasty habit of seeking out site competence by looking for a mobile version that has been prepared by the web-site owner. If its unable to find any such versions, Google transcodes its own version of the webpage, stripping down important details in the process ( visible in the screenshot). Definitely a nightmare for webmasters everywhere.

According to Beattie, Mowser will keep most of your site's important stuff (like AdSense ads) intact and even let you customize the look and feel of your mobilized pages with a custom "handheld" (not literally though) stylesheet. Neat huh? Alll you have to do is to tell Google to use Mowser (or your dedicated mobile site) instead of their..umm.. tasteless transcoder. The code (barely a few lines of HTML that goes into the HTML header section) needed to do just that are available in Russels's post. Now most of this might seem like a lot of hassle to general website owners, but for dedicated webmasters, proper rendering on handhelds might mean a rising popularity among a large majority of internet users. Why leave yourself out? Go Mowserise your site today.

[Via: UNEASYSilence]