Re: [WSG] Mobile graded browser support
If I may add to David's info, please check these sixteen mobile web articles/tutorials on dev.opera.com. They may be of help: http://dev.opera.com/articles/mobile/ Frank M. Palinkas QA Documentation/Technical Writer Opera Software ASA, Oslo, Norway http://www.opera.com/ http://dev.opera.com/articles/accessibility/ http://frank.helpware.net On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 6:41 PM, David Storey [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: As a slight update to this discussion, Opera has just had a timely release of our Mobile Browser Report [1]. A short digest: 9 out of the 10 top handsets in the US are Blackberry, with 4 out of 10 in the UK. The only other country that featured a Blackberry device was Germany with 2 out of 10. Globally, apart from the US and UK, Nokia dominates along with Sony Ericsson. Samsung is strong is South Africa. Motorola are conspicuous by their absence (they only feature once in the top ten model list for the top 10 countries where Opera Mini is the most popular). Palm is now also absent. They used to be strong in the UK and US, and possibly still are with business users (I see them a lot at conferences still), but the lack of a JVM by default hampers the install rate of Java based browsers. In June Opera Mini had 14.5 million unique users (Summer months are typically quiet due to summer holidays), and 3.2 billion web pages. The list of phones should give you a good idea of what kind of phones to test on and design for, as millions of users are represented by these models. Japan is a popular mobile market, but Opera doesn't supply Opera Mini there, so there is no data. We only distribute Opera Mobile (our biggest partner KDDI - second biggest operator in Japan - calls this PC Site Viewer) in Japan due to the proliferation of high end handsets and fast data rates. [1] http://www.opera.com/mobile_report/2008/06/ On 21 Jul 2008, at 16:53, Ted Drake wrote: FYI: David Storey is one of the lead engineers of Opera Browser. It's a rare honor to have a browser architect reflect on the industry in mailing lists. Do you see similar responses from Firefox, Safari, or IE architects? So, keep his suggestions in mind, he knows what he's talking about. I just wanted to make sure people realized the relevance of his comments. You may want to go back and restore any of his messages that were deleted and save them for future use. Ted *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** David Storey Chief Web Opener, Product Manager Opera Dragonfly, Consumer Product Manager Opera Core, Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group member Consumer Product Management Developer Relations Opera Software ASA Oslo, Norway Mobile: +47 94 22 02 32 E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Blog: http://my.opera.com/dstorey *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Mobile graded browser support
As a slight update to this discussion, Opera has just had a timely release of our Mobile Browser Report [1]. A short digest: 9 out of the 10 top handsets in the US are Blackberry, with 4 out of 10 in the UK. The only other country that featured a Blackberry device was Germany with 2 out of 10. Globally, apart from the US and UK, Nokia dominates along with Sony Ericsson. Samsung is strong is South Africa. Motorola are conspicuous by their absence (they only feature once in the top ten model list for the top 10 countries where Opera Mini is the most popular). Palm is now also absent. They used to be strong in the UK and US, and possibly still are with business users (I see them a lot at conferences still), but the lack of a JVM by default hampers the install rate of Java based browsers. In June Opera Mini had 14.5 million unique users (Summer months are typically quiet due to summer holidays), and 3.2 billion web pages. The list of phones should give you a good idea of what kind of phones to test on and design for, as millions of users are represented by these models. Japan is a popular mobile market, but Opera doesn't supply Opera Mini there, so there is no data. We only distribute Opera Mobile (our biggest partner KDDI - second biggest operator in Japan - calls this PC Site Viewer) in Japan due to the proliferation of high end handsets and fast data rates. [1] http://www.opera.com/mobile_report/2008/06/ On 21 Jul 2008, at 16:53, Ted Drake wrote: FYI: David Storey is one of the lead engineers of Opera Browser. It’s a rare honor to have a browser architect reflect on the industry in mailing lists. Do you see similar responses from Firefox, Safari, or IE architects? So, keep his suggestions in mind, he knows what he’s talking about. I just wanted to make sure people realized the relevance of his comments. You may want to go back and restore any of his messages that were deleted and save them for future use. Ted *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** David Storey Chief Web Opener, Product Manager Opera Dragonfly, Consumer Product Manager Opera Core, Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group member Consumer Product Management Developer Relations Opera Software ASA Oslo, Norway Mobile: +47 94 22 02 32 E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Blog: http://my.opera.com/dstorey *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
[WSG] Mobile graded browser support
All right. I will stop complaining about designing for the iPhone and try to attack this from a positive angle. How can we go about making our mobile websites according to sound principles. Bearing in mind that mobile browsers often lack the features we wish they had. Borrowing the terminology from Yahoo: - What is the current baseline of A-grade browser capabilities? - What browsers should receive A-grade support? - How do we on purpose disable CSS and/or JS for our C-grade browsers? - Should we perhaps have A-grade (Safari, Opera, Fennec and ?) and B-grade (MSIE Mobile, Netfront, Blackberry, Dillo, Obigo???) - And perhaps A- (for devices without a pointer and cursor)? Oh, and while we are at it, check this out: http://www.w3.org/WAI/mobile/experiences-new Lars Gunther *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Mobile graded browser support
On Jul 21, 2008, at 8:52 AM, Keryx Web wrote: All right. I will stop complaining about designing for the iPhone and try to attack this from a positive angle. I think designing for the iPhone is somewhat irrelevant, (but I'd agree that iphone specific URLs are a scary throwback to the bad not- so-old days). I have found that any thoughtfully designed - standards- compliant, usable/accessible - site works just fine in the iphone. How can we go about making our mobile websites according to sound principles. Bearing in mind that mobile browsers often lack the features we wish they had. A much more productive line of enquiry... Andrew *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
RE: [WSG] Mobile graded browser support
SUGGESTION IS TO FOCUS ON WEB BEST PRACTICES AT ALL TIMES: Referring to Andrew Maben's question/comments, namely: How can we go about making our mobile websites according to sound principles. Bearing in mind that mobile browsers often lack the features we wish they had. -- I suggest adherence to Web Best Practices regardless of the device(s) used, screen sizes, features (or lack thereof), and so on as the dominating consideration to be kept in mind at all times when designing Web sites/pages. PROOF BY EXAMPLE: I know that this approach works as I have implemented Scsi's Web Best Practices throughout the two URL addresses listed below. Check them out for yourself, and please note that the tenth Web Best Practices is Every (Mobile) Web Page Validates Good luck! Raymond Sonoff, President Sonoff Consulting Services, Inc. 271 Saxony Drive Crestview Hills, KY 41017 Bus. Tel. No.: 859.261.5908 Scsi PKT Web site URL: http://sonoffconsulting.com/ Gen'l e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Corp. e-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] Scsi PKT Mobile Web Site URL: http://sonoffconsulting.mobi/ _ From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Andrew Maben Sent: Monday, July 21, 2008 9:37 AM To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: Re: [WSG] Mobile graded browser support On Jul 21, 2008, at 8:52 AM, Keryx Web wrote: All right. I will stop complaining about designing for the iPhone and try to attack this from a positive angle. I think designing for the iPhone is somewhat irrelevant, (but I'd agree that iphone specific URLs are a scary throwback to the bad not-so-old days). I have found that any thoughtfully designed - standards-compliant, usable/accessible - site works just fine in the iphone. How can we go about making our mobile websites according to sound principles. Bearing in mind that mobile browsers often lack the features we wish they had. A much more productive line of enquiry... Andrew *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Mobile graded browser support
On 21 Jul 2008, at 14:52, Keryx Web wrote: All right. I will stop complaining about designing for the iPhone and try to attack this from a positive angle. How can we go about making our mobile websites according to sound principles. Bearing in mind that mobile browsers often lack the features we wish they had. Borrowing the terminology from Yahoo: It is hard to say. I'd ask, do you really want to make a mobile version in the first place? Same issues hold true about making a specific mobile version as does with making a specific print or accessibility version. In many cases giving the regular desktop version is as good or better, plus any optimisations done for mobiles can also benefit those with disabilities as there is a lot of synergies between making a site accessible and making it mobile friendly. We at Opera also experience a huge flood of bug reports every time a site blocks our mobile version from accessing the regular version of a popular site and give it a reduced version. Our experience is most users want the regular version and don't like reduced mobile versions. Your milage will vary on a case by case basis however. You can also use media queries and/or handheld media to optimise styling for mobiles (you can give a different style to menus to avoid the issue browsers like Mobile Safari has with not supporting :hover for example) . If the best option turns out that you want a mobile site, and can cope with the overhead in maintaining two web sites, then a) always make sure you give the user a way to access the regular version if they do so choose to (and not hidden away where it can't be found), and b) don't remove too many useful features. There is a W3C document on Mobile Web Best Practices, from the Working Group that I've just become a member of. The URL is http://www.w3.org/TR/mobile-bp/ and the mobileOK checker is at http://validator.w3.org/mobile/ These seem to be restricted to mobile specific sites and to the baseline of support, as they recommend XHTML Basic and using no JavaScript, which almost excludes regular web pages that have been made mobile friendly, and high end mobile browsers such as Opera Mobile, Opera Mini and WebKit based browsers can cope with more than what is recommended. - What is the current baseline of A-grade browser capabilities? More or less the same as desktop browsers. Transcoded browsers will have some issues with JavaScript that requires user interaction as they are compiled on the server, but can cope well with regular DOM scripting. - What browsers should receive A-grade support? Difficult as there are so many mobile browsers, and depends what market you want to target. It is easy to say to exclude any browser that can only cope with WAP (WML). W3C MWBP recommends XHTML Basic 1.1, so I would think that should be a base-line at the very least. It should probably be higher in my opinion though. There is also the case of which browsers are the most popular as you don't want to cut off the most potential visitors to your site (one of the reasons why IE6 is still A grade). This link http://theregoesdave.com/2008/07/18/iphone-users-only-a-small-percentage-of-overall-mobile-we/ shows the most popular OS on the mobile web (hint: not iPhone), from that studies point of view (always take stats with a pinch of salt, they never even agree with each other), but doesn't show which browsers are being used. From the information we know, Opera Mini is very popular in the US with Palm and RIM Blackberry users (the default browsers are not exactly standards compliant modern browsers). - How do we on purpose disable CSS and/or JS for our C-grade browsers? Many of the basic browsers will not render the CSS (or do it very badly) and wont process the javascript, so as long as you use progressive enhancement and semantic well structured XHTML then that may be enough, but there needs to be more studies on what all of these browsers support. You can, if building mobile specific versions, apply the Mobile Web Best Practices, and progressively enhance for better browsers such as Opera and WebKit. I'd recommend not using browser sniffing at all possible as that is not scaleable and often breaks. For CSS you could add CSS with media queries (modern browsers support media queries), so the low end browsers will not be able to read the CSS- and you can even check for larger screens and give different styling for those screens.For JavaScript you can just use Object Detection. - Should we perhaps have A-grade (Safari, Opera, Fennec and ?) and B- grade (MSIE Mobile, Netfront, Blackberry, Dillo, Obigo???) - And perhaps A- (for devices without a pointer and cursor)? Oh, and while we are at it, check this out: http://www.w3.org/WAI/mobile/experiences-new Lars Gunther
RE: [WSG] Mobile graded browser support
FYI: David Storey is one of the lead engineers of Opera Browser. It's a rare honor to have a browser architect reflect on the industry in mailing lists. Do you see similar responses from Firefox, Safari, or IE architects? So, keep his suggestions in mind, he knows what he's talking about. I just wanted to make sure people realized the relevance of his comments. You may want to go back and restore any of his messages that were deleted and save them for future use. Ted *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***