(Note: the following represents my own views and do not reflect those of Mortal Kombat Online or any other of its staff.)
Well, it’s been a tad difficult separating myself from Mortal Kombat Online’s day to day operations, but more and more ~Crow~ has been proving himself up to the challenge of taking my place and in fact is doing a better job than I ever did. Nowadays, though, my site work has consisted of helping do database maintenance and working on supporting CCShadow’s efforts towards V.8. So far, things have been coming along swimmingly.
One of my definite hopes with V.8 is that we finally create a mobile-friendly version of the site. As an iPhone user, I’ve found myself using my phone’s Safari for more and more web browsing. V.7’s layout is definitely not mobile browser friendly, and it would be nice to make it where it can be so. It’ll be much more of a design issue than anything else; for example, adding mobile browser support to my personal site really required nothing more than a small plugin which detects the browser’s user agent string and chooses the layout based on that.
Another site called Kamidogu has taken a rather interesting approach. Its webmaster actually developed an iPhone native app for accessing his site. Admittedly I haven’t tried it, but it’s a neat concept. Kamidogu is hardly the first website to make an iPhone native app, but it is the first Mortal Kombat fansite to do so. So far reviews have been very positive regarding the app, and I wish them the best of luck regarding it.
Now, would MK Online ever release such an app? Personally, I would say no, and I say this as an iPhone user. Considering we’d not likely be creating any other apps, it doesn’t make sense for us to pay the $100 or so for the certificate needed to publish apps from Apple. Also, it’s much easier to create one universal layout for mobile devices than it is to create separate apps for iPhone, Android, Blackberry, etc. Finally, it comes down to time. CCShadow is a very busy guy and just developing V.8 is taking the bulk of his free time. I just don’t see him developing separate apps.
Ah, well. Like I said, it’s an interesting concept. I just don’t ever see it being implemented for MK Online.