(keitai-l) Re: Mobile Web Development in Japan: A Tag Soup Tale

From: Kyle Barrow <kyle_at_pukupi.com>
Date: 12/07/05
Message-Id: <91AC3199-2F74-4A27-AAF6-327F11E281C8@pukupi.com>
On Dec 6, 2005, at 16:17, Christopher Kobayashi wrote:

> http://web-graphics.com/mtarchive/001690.php

Interesting reading and from the responses, obviously fuel for debate.

When talking about web standards, many people seem to confuse  
standards for best practices. HTML 3.2 is a web standard including  
the <font> tag and as much as I like to stick it to Docomo for crappy  
XHTML standards support, they did move mobile development away from  
HDML/WML back to W3C standards with their first i-mode mobiles.

It is not too difficult to build an i-mode compatible HTML page that  
validates with the W3C but doing so is not following best practices  
of separating content from layout with XHTML and CSS and this is  
where Docomo has dropped the ball.

> - In the current state of the Japanese mobile web, is developing only
> in XHTML a reality?


AU, Vodafone and Docomo's FOMA mobiles all support native XHTML  
however working with CSS on a FOMA mobile is a painful exercise. By  
only supporting inline CSS, Docomo defeats the best practice of  
separating content from layout. Docomo also makes it interesting by  
only rendering CSS if served the correct "application/xhtml+xml"  
content type. While this is not a bad thing, i-mode mobiles don't  
send any HTTP_ACCEPT header information which makes detecting  
"application/xhtml+xml" support a little tricky.

> - How many older keitais are out there that would barf at XHTML. Also
> how about the need for SJIS?
>

You can build XHTML pages that degrade nicely on 2G i-mode mobile as  
long as you omit the XML declaration.

See http://pukupi.com/articles/top10/#hint3 for details.

Japanese upgrade their mobiles fairly regularly so with no more 2G i- 
mode mobiles expected next year, there should be be extensive unicode  
and native XHTML support by the end of 2007.

> I personally believe that some type of server-side piece is required
> that will custom-serve content based on WURFL (or some other open
> source of handset metadata). For example, older keitais that can't
> handle files over a specific size will only be sent smaller portions
> of content and tag formated accordingly. BUT this is a moving target
> ... and older keitais must be dying quickly, so eventually we'll get
> there. Question is when?

I'm a staunch believer in content in context and what's useful on  
your desktop is usually not on a mobile. The CSS "media" property  
gives you some control for targeting content although it doesn't save  
the mobile user a byte of bandwidth. Since Docomo supports neither  
external CSS or the media property, WURFL et al are going to be an  
important mobile tools for some time.

Kyle

-- 

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Received on Wed Dec 7 10:06:11 2005