CodeStore on WAP
So, I've been playing with my new P910i over the weekend and I like it. Ok, a few people have rightly pointed out that it's "like a brick", but it's so much easier to do the day-to-day things like replying to SMS messages. I'd grown to hate SMS as a form of communication (often opting to call with my reply instead). Now it's almost a pleasure to send and receive. I've yet to get email working but I'm on the train to London tomorrow so I'll try then. Won't I be looking the business-type?!
When I called Vodafone to upgrade one of the questions they asked, along with "You do know it's a big phone?", was "Can I ask why do you want one of those?". I told him I'm a web developer and need a WAP-enabled "PDA" to test sites with. Not really true at all; I've never been asked by a customer to make sure a site is small-screen-ready. But I can't help imagining more and more of us will be using handheld devices to access the internet in the future. So it's important to at least be aware of this and try to cater for them.
No prizes for guessing the first address I typed in to the phone's web browser. Surprisingly things looked ok and everything worked as expected. The only problem really is layout of the page. Things are in the wrong place. Information should really be the first thing you see, without having to scroll past all the navigation and other links.
So, now I need to make codestore WAP ready. The problem is the cost of testing it. With GPRS you pay for data transfer, rather than time spent online, but this will still prove costly if you have to change/test/change/test for any amount of time. Obviously there's no way of testing locally on your own server. Your phone can only access the real web.
Help is at hand though in the guise of Opera. You simply press Shift+F11 and it enters Small Screen Rendering mode (see image above). You can now test locally without using your phone or worrying about the cost.
Obviously this only tests the site in Opera's mobile browser. Still, it gives a good idea of what to expect in the others. At least you can get it right in Opera and then do the real testing on the phone.
The key to designing for mobiles/PDAs is the CSS you apply. You can have a stylesheet linked to your site for media="handheld", in the same way we can apply CSS to printed pages. How you do this so as to please most phones is documented here.
More on this as and when I get round to updating this site...
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Jake - there IS a way of testing without-charge on your phone, as long as you have Opera installed on your P910 (this tip doesn't work with the standard SE browser).
Load up the SE Sync software and the DSS-25 syncstation drivers, then either pop the P910 into the cradle or connect using bluetooth.
Once you see the little P910 icon in the taskbar (indicating correct connection), you will find that your phone will download pages through your PC's internet connection, rather than the GPRS one. And at broadband speeds too!
The bluetooth option is particularly cool because you can wander around your house with streaming audio playing through your phone without charge!
Thanks Tyron. I knew nothing about that. Which should teach me not to jump to conclusions so easily ;o)
Interesting that I just got your tip to work first time, but that I've not been able to actually connect to the internet with Opera and GPRS.
Also interesting that this site on Opera for my phone looks nothing like the screenshot of Opera SSR that I posted above. Maybe because my PC has Opera 8 and Symbian UIQ only has support from Opera 6.31.
Got lots to learn...
i am writing this from Opera on my phone in its cradle via my adsl line. cool.
Jake,
When WAP was still very new, I remember looking at the development tools available and finding many many WAP emulators.
I have just type 'WAP Emulator' into Google and got back 355,000 hits. I guess just a matter of finding a decent and reasonably priced/free one then you can do all your development and testing on the PC.
Chris
Trouble is there are so many variations on markup and phones sizes and implemetations. cHtml, wml, xhtml-mp.
Thats why a chap needs a WURFL ...
see {Link}
Would it be possible to use the infrared feature?
I can remember using my phone, pda and pc to synchronise the data between themselves a while back ... they were all able to talk amongst themselves via infrared ... sure it was a bit slow, but I only did it on a weekly basis ... and when "place-shifting" the music from the computer to the pda, an usb cable was used instead.
> ...I've not been able to actually connect to the internet with Opera and GPRS.
Try Control Panel -> Connections -> Internet Accounts and make sure that under 'Accounts' the 'Preferred' option is set to 'VF Contract Internet'.
If it is set to something else, I've found that Opera often won't use it.
Thanks Tyron. That worked. Odd. I notice that "VF Contract.." is the first in the list. Would the default have to be the first listed in order for it to work? Strange.
Hi. i must admit, The idea of connection a P900 or P910 via bluetooth to a notebook and browser wap pages at adsl speeds is quite clever! but when it comes to wap and xhtml services, like wap.abicell.com , then you can not rely on the opera browser as nobody is using it. 95% of the end-user are browsing for their ringtones, games, chat, etc through the standard sonyericsson browser.
Hi Jake,
maybe a stupid message, but what do you think of letting regular visitors of your website test the wap version of your website?
anyway, after being soaked into SAP Netweaver stuff still reading your blog with a high amusement and quality content factor.