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 Scripts application/vnd.wap.wmlscriptc .wmlsc
XHTML Basic application/xhtml+xml .xhtml
XHTML-MP application/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
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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]
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