Site Goes Mobile-Friendly for iPhone and iPod Touch

New formatting for iPhone and iPod Touch users follows the site's current style and color scheme. (Kevin Diffily)

Mobile users looking to view Connect2Mason.com from their iPhones or iPod Touch can now find George Mason University's student news a little simpler, or at least requiring less scrolling.

As of early Friday, anyone who tries to view the site from the two Apple devices will be "automagically" transferred to a different interface than the page users otherwise see on a computer screen or other mobile  phone.

Kevin Diffily, a software engineer in the Office of Student Media, created the iApp. He says he was inspired to make the web-based mobile application during an iPhone software development seminar early last week.

"While watching the presentation, I was like, 'Wow. That's easy, and I know the crew at student media wanted an iApp,'" said Diffily, who will soon be pursuing his master's degree in computer science. "I pulled out my laptop and wrote up a functional  — although rough  — app in about twenty minutes at the conference, [and] of course it took about another day and a half to get it just right."

The design of the iApp follows the style and color scheme of the current Connect2Mason website, but it reduces scrolling by consolidating links to front page stories into a single screen.

The same general formatting for those viewing the site via iPad is expected to be completed later next week.