Re: [WSG] Mobiles and standards
At least for the top mobile browsers such as Nokia S60, the Safari version for iPhone and Opera's mobile browsers, they can cope with full HTML and XHTML and CSS, so they can handle the regular desktop site. Some render the page in desktop mode, and some reformat the page to fit in one column. Opera mobile can do both. This solution can give quite good results. If you want to optimise the site then you can use handheld stylesheets and/or CSS Media Queries. Unfortunately it doesn't seem like Nokia or Apple will be supporting handheld, but they will most likely support Media Queries (they are included in the latest WebKit builds). Opera Mobile supports both and Opera Mini will fully support handheld stylesheets in Opera Mini 4 (and Media Queries I believe). Using media queries to give a different stylesheet to devices under a certain resolution will work well except in less modern mobile browsers that are still WAP based or have poor standards support. These should be marginalised as carriers and handset makers look for better browsers to include in their phones after seeing what full html browsers can do. Opera is certainly seeing this, with having deals in place with many major handset makers like SonyEriksson, Nokia, Palm, HTC, Samsung, Motorla, Toshiba etc and Carriers such as T-Mobile, Telefonica (number 1 in Spain), TMN (number 1 in Portugal) shipping Opera Mobile (smartphones) or Opera Mini (any phone with Java) and more announcements in the pipeline. The other browser makers with poor standards support will have to improve their products, especially if sites take advantage of the more interesting technologies such as Media Queries. The third option is to make a mobile specific site, which is often done in XHTML Basic or Mobile Profile (be careful here as a well formness error in XML will likely make the page not render at all). This is often the best option if you either have a very heavy regular site that will be difficult to navigate on mobile and take a lot of bandwidth and time to download (Kb often equals money for many mobile web users), or you want to give mobile specific content that fits the context of using a mobile. The down side to this approach is that you will have two sites to maintain instead of one, while with media queries or handheld style you only have one extra stylesheet, so this approach should only be taken if you need to and have the resources. This kind of site will work better on older style mobile browsers however. One of the biggest issues with mobile web design is actually the fonts. Many phones, especially feature phones are limited to one font in limited sizes and no italic fontface. This can make Opera Mini 3 look different one one phone than it does on another, so don't expect pixel perfect layouts. David On 31 May 2007, at 12:02, Nick Cowie wrote: Hi Katrina I have not done enough research on this, but: If I creating a site that I expected mobile browsers to visit (ie every site I create from now) I would use XHTML 1.0 transitional DTD, mime type of text/html and restrict my XHTML to the XHTML-MP subset and my CSS to the WCSS subset If I was building a mobile only site (and I have not done that yet), I would have to be convinced of the advantages of moving to a XHTML-MP dtd and associated mime type. In other words XHTML 1.0 transitional works with most browsers, computer or mobile based. I have done no research of redirecting mobile users to a different URL, .Apparently the WP-PDA plugin http://imthi.com/wp-pda does this and works with the major mobile browsers, so time to play with it. Nick -- Nick Cowie http://nickcowie.com *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** David Storey Chief Web Opener Opera Software Oslo, Norway W: http://my.opera.com/dstorey ✉ : [EMAIL PROTECTED] ✆ : +47 24 16 42 26 *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Mobiles and standards
Katrina I would serve XHTML and stick to XHTML-Basic or XHTML-MP subset of features. Because not all elements are available in XHTML-Basic or XHTML-MP for example button. So if you build a form use input type=submit not button type=submit otherwise most mobile users will not be able to submit the form. And only use the WCSS (Wireless CSS) standards you should get most modern phones. Specs (both 400Kb PDFs) XHTML-WP http://www.openmobilealliance.org/release_program/docs/browsing/v2_2-20061020-a/oma-wap-xhtmlmp-v1_1-20061020-a.pdf WCSS http://www.openmobilealliance.org/release_program/docs/browsing/v2_2-20061020-a/oma-wap-wcss-v1_1-20061020-a.pdf That is still no guarantee that it will work in all mobiles, there are a number of different OSes and around 50 different browsers for mobiles and you thought developing for the 4 different flavours of desktop browsers was difficult. Nick -- Nick Cowie http://nickcowie.com *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Mobiles and standards
Nick Cowie wrote: Katrina I would serve XHTML and stick to XHTML-Basic or XHTML-MP subset of features. Gday Nick, Thank you for your response : Which accompanying mime type would you choose for XHTML-Basic? text/xml application/xhtml + xml application/xml Note: XHTML-MP has it's own mime-type application/vnd.wap.xhtml+xml If you pick XHTML-MP and its associated mime type, then it would be a special mobile site, and wouldn't you also need to use content negotiation to ensure user-agents that couldn't handle that mime type be redirected? Because not all elements are available in XHTML-Basic or XHTML-MP for example button. So if you build a form use input type=submit not button type=submit otherwise most mobile users will not be able to submit the form. And only use the WCSS (Wireless CSS) standards you should get most modern phones. Would it be smart to make your whole site like this anyway, so you serve the same content to everyone? If not, how would you then determine whether or not incoming traffic was mobile and thus to be redirected to a subdomain that served up required content? Kat *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Mobiles and standards
Hi, You may find the following dotmobi tools helpful: Free online mobile-readiness report, http://ready.mobi/launch.jsp?locale=en_EN Free online mobile emulator, http://emulator.mtld.mobi/emulator.php The W3C tests that these are based on is here: http://www.w3.org/TR/mobileOK-basic10-tests/ On Thu, May 31, 2007 6:50 am, Katrina wrote: Gday, What mark-up is best used for mobile devices? And why? W3C standards (HTML4 or XHTML 1.0) or other (XHTML-Basic, XHTML-MP, WML, HDML) ? Do the 'other' count as standards? Can mobile devices process CSS 2.1 or less when served as media=handheld? (I am coming across some references to a specialised CSS for mobiles, which suggest that they can't process standard CSS). Do mobile devices that handle XHTML need a particular mime type (eg. text/html, text/xml, application/xhtml + xml, application/xml ? NB. I am very tempted to side with the W3C XHTML 1.0 Strict and serve that up to everybody regardless of type of device (although admitting to device dependence within the CSS using mediatypes). But, in so doing, do I then snub a large percentage of mobile devices? If mime type is important for mobile devices and it is different from text/html, does content negotiation assist in solving this problem? Any or all answers are appreciated :) Thanks, Kat *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** -- Stuart Foulstone. http://www.bigeasyweb.co.uk BigEasy Web Design 69 Flockton Court Rockingham Street Sheffield S1 4EB Tel. 07751 413451 *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Mobiles and standards
Hi Katrina I have not done enough research on this, but: If I creating a site that I expected mobile browsers to visit (ie every site I create from now) I would use XHTML 1.0 transitional DTD, mime type of text/html and restrict my XHTML to the XHTML-MP subset and my CSS to the WCSS subset If I was building a mobile only site (and I have not done that yet), I would have to be convinced of the advantages of moving to a XHTML-MP dtd and associated mime type. In other words XHTML 1.0 transitional works with most browsers, computer or mobile based. I have done no research of redirecting mobile users to a different URL, .Apparently the WP-PDA plugin http://imthi.com/wp-pda does this and works with the major mobile browsers, so time to play with it. Nick -- Nick Cowie http://nickcowie.com *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Mobiles and standards
You may find a lot of real-world info here: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/wmlprogramming/ It might not be to everyone's taste, as the group is often critical of the W3C and its mobile efforts, perceived as choosing theoretical constructs over what real handsets are out there in the wild... Katrina wrote: W3C standards (HTML4 or XHTML 1.0) or other (XHTML-Basic, XHTML-MP, WML, HDML) ? HTML4 and XHTML1.0 are safe only for the newest handsets with enough power to run Safari or Opera. XHTML-Basic is a W3C standard few use - see next. XHTML-MP is XHTML-Basic with some extension coming from the browser makers (Netscape extensions anyone :-)?) and is the de facto safe standard for new handsets. HDML has died a quiet death sometime in the previous century; don't bother. WML is the fallback standard every handset (bar those based on i-mode) more or less supports if nothing else works, and the only one you can rely on for scripting support (via WMLScript). I-mode handsets require CHTML, which is a heavily tweaked son of HTML 3.2 and is supposed to converge toward XHTML-MP (nobody seems much in a hurry, anyway). Can mobile devices process CSS 2.1 or less when served as media=handheld? You just can't rely on it. Some do, some do not and some make a mess of it. Mobile IE has a longstanding tradition of applying both the screen stylesheets and the handheld ones. Do mobile devices that handle XHTML need a particular mime type (eg. text/html, text/xml, application/xhtml + xml, application/xml ? This comes straight from the Wireless FAQ (http://www.thewirelessfaq.com/): Plain WML documents text/vnd.wap.wml.wml Wireless Bitmap Images image/vnd.wap.wbmp .wbmp Compiled WML documents application/vnd.wap.wmlc.wmlc WMLScripts text/vnd.wap.wmlscript .wmls Compiled WML Scriptsapplication/vnd.wap.wmlscriptc .wmlsc XHTML Basic application/xhtml+xml .xhtml XHTML-MPapplication/vnd.wap.xhtml+xml .xhtml and yes, mobile browser can be picky about it. NB. I am very tempted to side with the W3C XHTML 1.0 Strict and serve that up to everybody regardless of type of device (although admitting to device dependence within the CSS using mediatypes). But, in so doing, do I then snub a large percentage of mobile devices? Yes, definitely. You'd be leaving out: 1. old handsets; 2. cheap and less powerful handsets without the steam to run a desktop-derived browser; 3. Nokia users who choose wrong between a heavy 'proper' browser and the lighter 'WML' one (some handsets have more than one browser)... If mime type is important for mobile devices and it is different from text/html, does content negotiation assist in solving this problem? WURFL has been around for some time now (http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/ and http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/faq.php) For a starter I'd suggest you take a look at this: http://www.passani.it/gap/ Least I can say, it's well written (W3C, take note)... djn -- - Dejan Kozina Dolina 346 (TS) - I-34018 Italy tel./fax: +39 040 228 436 - cell.: +39 348 7355 225 skype: dejankozina http://www.kozina.com/ - e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
[WSG] Mobiles and standards
Gday, What mark-up is best used for mobile devices? And why? W3C standards (HTML4 or XHTML 1.0) or other (XHTML-Basic, XHTML-MP, WML, HDML) ? Do the 'other' count as standards? Can mobile devices process CSS 2.1 or less when served as media=handheld? (I am coming across some references to a specialised CSS for mobiles, which suggest that they can't process standard CSS). Do mobile devices that handle XHTML need a particular mime type (eg. text/html, text/xml, application/xhtml + xml, application/xml ? NB. I am very tempted to side with the W3C XHTML 1.0 Strict and serve that up to everybody regardless of type of device (although admitting to device dependence within the CSS using mediatypes). But, in so doing, do I then snub a large percentage of mobile devices? If mime type is important for mobile devices and it is different from text/html, does content negotiation assist in solving this problem? Any or all answers are appreciated :) Thanks, Kat *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
