| Making a Site Friendly for Cell Phones? |
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Written by John Barendrecht March 3, 2006 Looking at my web site's log files, I noticed an increasing number of daily visits from cell phones, Blackberry devices and other portable devices. My site is not optimized at all for these small screens and I think trying to navigate my site with a screen smaller than 640 x 480 would be extremely frustrating. I don't think anyone would order my products using a cell phone as trying to enter name, address and Visa # on a phone would be very time consuming. Besides that, I am not sure that cell phones could display a secure browser. Does anyone bother to make an ecommerce site friendly to cell phones? Other than sites selling ring tones, etc. Is this worthwhile? Will they come back later from their computer and order products? Best regards, John Barendrecht Centralhome.com Company Inc. Written by Martha Retallick March 6, 2006 In response to John Barendrecht's post about making websites cell-phone friendly, I would like to say... There is a move afoot among those of us who (try to) adhere to Web Standards to make sites work in cell phones. That being said, accessing the Web via cell phone is slow. And I'm talking slow enough for you to wish you had that 14.4 modem that your computer connected to the Internet with back in 1995. But that's how things are now. Cellular telephony, like Internet connections, will likely undergo dramatic changes in the next decade. So, word to the wise: Start working on making your website designs work in devices that aren't computers, because that's where things are headed. Martha Retallick Western Sky Communications Web/Graphic Design & Consulting Written by Andreas Huttenrauch March 6, 2006 As far as cell phones and PDAs are concerned, ALL sites should be friendly to these devices. IMHO I don't think the masses would make a purchase on a mobile device, but they definitely make purchasing decisions. If you sell products, the details should at least be visible so that a mobile person can decide to buy your product over the competitors', and make a "todo" to buy it later from a PC. For the service industry, at the very least you should show contact information, so that mobile people can find you and then call you or email you. Andreas Huttenrauch Globi Web Solutions globi.ca Written by Rich Dudley March 7, 2006 "There is a move afoot... to make sites work in cell phones. That being said, accessing the Web via cell phone is slow." - Martha Retallick Actually, cell phones are now operating at DSL speeds. I have a new Treo 700w, which runs on Verizon's EVDO network. I'm clocking speeds of 440 kbps in my rural area, and Verizon claims speeds over 700 kbps in major cities. In contrast, my buddy's Treo 650, which doesn't support the EVDO network, is clocking about 25-30 kbps. The 700w is one of several devices now on the market that operate at these speeds. Sprint has a couple of devices coming out soon as well which will operate on its high-speed network, too. Building function for these devices has gotten much easier recently. Microsoft's .NET platform has greatly improved the adaptive rendering of its controls. When a website built on .NET 2.0 is accessed, the site determines what device and browser version is being used, and produces code which functions on that platform. Remember this is function, not design, which is another aspect you'll need to keep in mind. I use my Treo for quite a bit of web surfing, blog posting, etc. On short business trips, I don't even travel with a laptop, since I can function pretty well for a couple of days with just the phone. Future plans for my websites include making them compatible with these devices. Rich Dudley bloomery.com Written by Michael Linehan March 7, 2006 "Does anyone bother to make an ecommerce site friendly to cell phones? Other than sites selling ring tones, etc. Is this worthwhile?" - John Barendrecht Hi John, I don't actually do this for my clients - yet. There hasn't been a call for it. But just to let you know that building for this market is part of GoLive. I presume it's there in Dreamweaver too. In other words, easy-to-use tools are in place. And so many people research before buying. Even if it's an experiment for you, perhaps it's worth it. If only one comes back later, I'm imagining that would be enough to cover the cost of providing the content. Michael Linehan marketing-alchemy.com Written by Tom Anson March 9, 2006 Although I have designed and built my own websites, I'm in no way a professional designer. I'm struggling hard just to get a basic XHTML, static paged website built. So when I hear stuff about building for cell phones -- especially when it gets into the .NET arena -- my head spins. I don't even know what the topic is about, really. I checked in my Dreamweaver 8 and found a document type XHTML Mobile 1.0. Would that be for cell phone-compatible pages? As for making pages for cell phones, is that a CSS issue, or are we talking about something altogether different -- like a separate website, or a website within a website. Tom Anson Anson Aromatic Essentials Written by Tom Aman March 10, 2006 "I checked in my Dreamweaver 8 and found a document type XHTML Mobile 1.0. Would that be for cell phone-compatible pages?" - Tom Anson The answer is "yes". There is also WML (Wireless Markup Language) that has been around for awhile. But rather than just limiting it to cell phones, the more general term is "hand-held devices". This includes PDAs, Palm Pilots, Windows CE devices, and Internet-ready cell phones and probably others. If you still think of a cell phone screen as a little tiny monochrome screen with space for only three or four short lines of text, take time to check out the latest cell phones. My cell phone, like many (most?) modern phones, came with Web browsing capability built in. While the screen on a cell phone may be relatively tiny, it is still large enough to convey useable information. Whether or not it is worth making pages for hand-held devices, I suspect that depends very much on the purpose of the site. For more info, check out http://webdesign.about.com/od/pdas/. And for an idea of the future possibilities, look at http://www.bitflash.com/ and http://www.qualcomm.com Tom Aman Aman Software Written by Rose Lacy March 13, 2006 A while ago I became interested in developing for the mobile web (well okay I got a cool new phone and wanted to see myself on it). But dang, I'm tired of paying Macromedia $400 every year for an upgrade, so I downloaded Nokia's free mobile web development kit. I also read the extensive documentation at WC3 on style sheets for hand held devices. I was pleasantly surprised to find WML easy to switch to from HTML. The only hold up in getting my WML site to display was in setting the proper ReWriteCond in my .htaccess to selectively display either my WML page or HTML page based on the incoming browser. This worked for me: RewriteCond %{HTTP_ACCEPT} application/vnd.wap.multipart.mixed RewriteRule index.htm$ index.wml [L] Some phones will still display the HTML page, so I took all graphics off my page. The resulting page, optimized for hand held devices, has the added benefit of being accessible to text readers for the blind. Rose Lacy webrosedesign.com Comments (3)
Roman
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| here is a php code that will work // This inserts the redirection commands into the header redirectWmlOrHtml("index.wml", "index.html"); // These functions do all the work function isWapBrowser($browser) { return( $browser=="Noki" || // Nokia phones and emulators $browser=="Eric" || // Ericsson WAP phones and emulators $browser=="WapI" || // Ericsson WapIDE 2.0 $browser=="MC21" || // Ericsson MC218 $browser=="AUR " || // Ericsson R320 $browser=="R380" || // Ericsson R380 $browser=="UP.B" || // UP.Browser $browser=="WinW" || // WinWAP browser $browser=="UPG1" || // UP.SDK 4.0 $browser=="upsi" || // another kind of UP.Browser ?? $browser=="QWAP" || // unknown QWAPPER browser $browser=="Jigs" || // unknown JigSaw browser $browser=="Java" || // unknown Java based browser $browser=="Alca" || // unknown Alcatel-BE3 browser (UP based?) $browser=="MITS" || // unknown Mitsubishi browser $browser=="MOT-" || // unknown browser (UP based?) $browser=="My S" || // unknown Ericsson devkit browser ? $browser=="WAPJ" || // Virtual WAPJAG www.wapjag.de $browser=="fetc" || // fetchpage.cgi Perl script from www.wapcab.de $browser=="ALAV" || // yet another unknown UP based browser ? $browser=="Wapa"); // another unknown browser (Web based "Wapalyzer"?) } function agentIsWapBrowser() { return(isWapBrowser($_SERVER["$HTTP_USER_AGENT"])); } function agentSupportsWml() { return(strpos(strtoupper($_SERVER["HTTP_ACCEPT"]),"VND.WAP.WML") > 0); } function useWml() { return(agentSupportsWml() || agentIsWapBrowser()); } function redirectWmlOrHtml($wmlredirect, $htmlredirect) { if(useWml()) { header("302 Moved Temporarily"); header("Location: index.wml"); die(); } } ?> |
Omar
said:
| As many people do not know Japanese phones have had DSL speeds for internet connection since 2002. Along with free email and free text messaging. I am building a site for these phones in Japan. Does the script above include those for Japan. Does anyone have a line on where I can go to make a website for Japanese phones. Please help. |
DJTEAZER
said:
| Great article, very helpful, thank you. However, I do wish to make all my websites compatible with Cellphones and PDA’s and whatever is to come. What I really want to know is, how to activate the sounds from the website over the phone. For instance, I run Internet Radio. I would like to listen to my stations over my cellphones, while I’m out and about. How do I do this? I know I can download music to listen over my cellphone, or sounds for my ringers, etc; But I really want to be able to tune in to my Electronic station and Rock Station. Now both have buttons that direct you to open up either: Winamp, Real Media, Windows Media, ITunes players but what does a Cellphone use? Also, you added php code, I tried adding that to my html website, and all the text ended up at the top, do you have this script for html use? Any help would be just grand, Thank you. DJTEAZER http://www.teazerstunage.net |
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