(keitai-l) Re: Using Just One Markup Language

From: Christopher Kobayashi <chriskk_at_gmail.com>
Date: 10/12/04
Message-ID: <cd896f6804101122507644be5c@mail.gmail.com>
While developing a mobile site earlier this year, I documented some
issues on my wiki:
http://wiki.oreno.org/bin/view.cgi/Orenowiki/JapaneseMobileSpace

Please feel free to add it to the keitai wiki if you find something
that might be useful. Refactor it too.

> Does anybody have an overview of the current state of HTML to WML
> conversion by AU's gateways? How good is the conversion, and what works
> well and what doesn't?

Well, during development I noticed that on Openwave SDK 6.2K some
emojis don't appear on my laptop. So in the end had to use a real AU
mobile to check the look.
Especially for colors too. The SDK shows the colors nice and bright on
your computer screen, but on some actual phones certain colors don't
come through very well. I'm not into the hardware, but I think this is
due to brightness of the mobile screen and how the model interprets
the color. Designers can get pretty frustrated that the site's color
doesn't come out the way they intended. (Can you tell I work w/ a
bunch of designers ...?)

And since I'm on the topic of design, photos/logos are an issue that
you might need to think about. Do you want to provide different photos
depending on the model or just go for the average. New models might
display the photo smaller than you intended because they use a higher
resolution. Or you can grab the User Agent to decide which photo/logo
to serve, which is prob the most elegant solution IMHO.

> Does it vary by model of phone? How practical is
> it these days to use just one markup language for all phones, perhaps
> with a few little things changed here and there? What models am I going
> to lose if I try this? What are the best models for testing?

If I recall correctly, for the project we decided to only support UP
browsers 6.0 and above. This let us code only with XHTML. The reason
for not supporting anything lower was the web server log stats for a
separate mobile site showed less than 1% for anything lower the 6.0
browsers. I don't remember if the reports showed total User Agent or
browser ...

Another thought just occured. Testing on actual phones gives you a
sense of how the site performs. Just like making sites in the 14.4
modem days. Heavy pages or slow servers (not enough bandwidth) can
really affect your experience.
Especially if you're on the subway and trying to grab a page to read
while still at a station. I hate it when I can't grab the content in
time. I guess I just gotta upgrade to the new Sanyo or Sony Ericson
model w/ 2.4Mbps ... ahhh gadget envy.

chriskk
-- 
b: http://moblog.oreno.org/
e: chriskk@gmail.com
Received on Tue Oct 12 08:50:37 2004