Can Convenience and Effectiveness Converge in Mobile Web? A Critique of the State-of-the-Art Adaptation Techniques for Web Navigation on Mobile Handheld Devices

Proliferation of mobile handheld devices and the significant advancement of wireless technologies and infrastructures have become a strong driving force of many mobile applications, including ubiquitous web information access through those devices. Despite the tremendous flexibility, accessibility, and convenience, rendering and navigating Web content on handheld devices suffer from significant usability problems attributable to their physical constraints, especially the small screen size, restricted interaction mechanisms, and low memory. Therefore, improving the effectiveness of web content navigation on those devices is crucial and has attracted increasing attention from both academics and industry. One of the promising solutions is adaptation, which focuses on the content restructuring, rearranging, and visualization. This article attempts to provide a comprehensive review of the state-of-the-art approaches to web adaptation for mobile handheld devices. The study not only categorizes, synthesizes, and compares the pros and cons of major adaptation methods but also discusses the observed problems in research methodology adopted in related studies and highlights future research directions. The article provides an important road map to the researchers and practitioners in this field.