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

From: Kyle Barrow <kyle_at_pukupi.com>
Date: 10/13/04
Message-Id: <A53D77E4-1CB2-11D9-9C38-000A95D6A470@pukupi.com>
On 2004 Oct 12, , at 14:50, Christopher Kobayashi wrote:
> 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.

Were you using the Japanese version of the Openwave SDK? There are some 
differences between this and the English version.

> 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 ...?)

Looking at some of the technology at CEATEC, mobiles have a bright and 
clear future but current mobiles don't come close to matching a well 
calibrated computer screen.

Your designers should run the same increased contrast tests you run to 
test a site's accessibility compliance. On a Mac you can do this with 
the contrast enhancer in the Universal Access panel. An enhancement of 
about 20% is close to a lot of mobile screens.

> 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.

<shameless plug> I spend some time in the i-mode Developers Guide 
running through some techniques for dynamically generating image 
content for mobile screens. </shameless plug> It is not difficult and 
combined with something like WURFL, you should be able to build a 
solution in your preferred server language.

Flash or SVG Tiny should solve many resolution issues for vector format 
image data like logos and maps, but photos are going to require a wee 
bit of batch work in Photoshop et al.

> 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.

You should always test on the real thing, preferably lots of real 
things (http://pukupi.com/articles/top10/#hint10)

Kyle

-- 

mobile web gear | pukupi.com
Received on Wed Oct 13 03:56:07 2004