Comments on: The Mobile Web and Fragmentation http://www.masabi.com/2008/09/24/the-mobile-web-and-fragmentation/ The ticket machine in your pocket Sat, 23 Jan 2010 20:27:25 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 By: Tom Godber http://www.masabi.com/2008/09/24/the-mobile-web-and-fragmentation/comment-page-1/#comment-50 Tom Godber Wed, 01 Oct 2008 09:44:00 +0000 http://masabi.com/2008/09/the-mobile-web-and-fragmentation.html#comment-50 Alex: sorry you're absolutely correct, WURFL itself isn't much use without a library to use the data!<br/><br/>igorskee: some of these points will vanish in time, the question is how much time! My next post is on handset upgrade cycles and the latency of buggy firmware implementations in real user's hands - give it a year and the power users will be OK, but for the average guy on the street I think we're talking 2-4 years before AJAX is a viable platform. Whether that matters depends on what you're trying to do and who you're trying to do it for! Alex: sorry you’re absolutely correct, WURFL itself isn’t much use without a library to use the data!

igorskee: some of these points will vanish in time, the question is how much time! My next post is on handset upgrade cycles and the latency of buggy firmware implementations in real user’s hands – give it a year and the power users will be OK, but for the average guy on the street I think we’re talking 2-4 years before AJAX is a viable platform. Whether that matters depends on what you’re trying to do and who you’re trying to do it for!

]]> By: igorskee http://www.masabi.com/2008/09/24/the-mobile-web-and-fragmentation/comment-page-1/#comment-49 igorskee Tue, 30 Sep 2008 05:50:00 +0000 http://masabi.com/2008/09/the-mobile-web-and-fragmentation.html#comment-49 I think this post is a great collection of various shortcomings of the mobilized web today. It helps people like us to make things better =)<br/><br/>Many of these points will simply vanish with time because of:<br/><br/>1) Improved JavaScript performance and network latency (there is nothing preventing a browser-based Google Maps implementation)<br/><br/>2) Improved standard-compliance for browser cores. At least they're all trying to meet the ACID3 test - unlike iPhone, BREW and Android teams who have zero in common<br/><br/>3) AJAX WebApps not a natural fit for handsets? I recommend picking up an iPhone 3G!<br/><br/>Great post - looking forward to an update in about a year ;) I think this post is a great collection of various shortcomings of the mobilized web today. It helps people like us to make things better =)

Many of these points will simply vanish with time because of:

1) Improved JavaScript performance and network latency (there is nothing preventing a browser-based Google Maps implementation)

2) Improved standard-compliance for browser cores. At least they’re all trying to meet the ACID3 test – unlike iPhone, BREW and Android teams who have zero in common

3) AJAX WebApps not a natural fit for handsets? I recommend picking up an iPhone 3G!

Great post – looking forward to an update in about a year ;)

]]> By: Alex Kerr http://www.masabi.com/2008/09/24/the-mobile-web-and-fragmentation/comment-page-1/#comment-48 Alex Kerr Mon, 29 Sep 2008 13:14:00 +0000 http://masabi.com/2008/09/the-mobile-web-and-fragmentation.html#comment-48 The best solution for the least effort that I've found is the WURFL-powered Wireless Abstraction Library (WALL) which is strictly what you should be mentioning rather than WURFL itself (which is just a device feature lookup). WALL actually generates the correct markup for the device connecting. In practice I find this not at all bad to be able to produce a browser app that works on most browsers most of the time, combined with some recognition code to add extra stuff in for PC browsers.<br/><br/>WALL is available in Java ( http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/java/wall.php ) and PHP versions ( http://wall.laacz.lv/ ) and a better version, WALL-NG (Java only) is on it's way.<br/><br/>As an alternative, lots of people use Haw Haw ( http://www.hawhaw.de/ ) The best solution for the least effort that I’ve found is the WURFL-powered Wireless Abstraction Library (WALL) which is strictly what you should be mentioning rather than WURFL itself (which is just a device feature lookup). WALL actually generates the correct markup for the device connecting. In practice I find this not at all bad to be able to produce a browser app that works on most browsers most of the time, combined with some recognition code to add extra stuff in for PC browsers.

WALL is available in Java ( http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/java/wall.php ) and PHP versions ( http://wall.laacz.lv/ ) and a better version, WALL-NG (Java only) is on it’s way.

As an alternative, lots of people use Haw Haw ( http://www.hawhaw.de/ )

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