Re: [WSG] Mobile graded browser support

2008-07-23 Thread Frank Palinkas
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

2008-07-22 Thread David Storey
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

2008-07-21 Thread Keryx Web
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

2008-07-21 Thread Andrew Maben

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

2008-07-21 Thread Raymond Sonoff
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

2008-07-21 Thread David Storey


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

2008-07-21 Thread Ted Drake
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]
***