If you are developing a mobile site you will quickly find that compatibility issues between different phone models makes IE6 look like a benchmark for web standards. It is frustrating to say the very least. There are thousands of handsets out there, each with its own quirks. To develop the site itself will take a fraction of the time than to learn every handset’s unique quirk.
I stumbled upon Yahoo! Blueprint. An absolutely brilliant concept, if only it handled anomalies better. First, let me explain the concept:
Blueprint is basically an XML template language. You mark up your mobile template with Blueprint’s special XML markup and Blueprint will render the appropriate (X)HTML/markup for the device based on the device’s specification. In other words, it renders device specific markup and you don’t even have to know anything about any handsets. All you need to know is the Blueprint markup language.
After you’ve marked up your templates, you create a config.xml file which tells the service where what is on your server, and upload it to Yahoo!. You can then alias your mobile domain and if someone goes to http://m.yoursite.com Yahoo! Blueprint identifies your device and based on that renders the appropriate markup for your device. Although I would have preferred for the rendering engine to sit on our own server, even this is not a deal breaker for me.
(image found on http://mirrorcracked.files.wordpress.com)
The big issue I have is with Vodaphone. Lets just say that Vodaphone worldwide has some pretty questionable tactics and this it is not solely Yahoo!’s fault. Vodaphone for some reason hides the user agent details (user agent specifies the operating system and browser used to open a URL) of phones connecting through a Vodaphone connection. To find out more, read this rant by Luca Passani. His rant is about Vodaphone UK, but I tested this and exactly the same thing happens here in South Africa.
The big issue with Yahoo! Blueprint however is that because it cannot identify the device based on the user agent it sees the handset as being incompatible. It then renders a default page which states that you must either download Yahoo! Go or Opera Mini to be able to access the site. So you download and install both, just to find the exact same message in both Yahoo! Go and Opera Mini. Why? No matter what you use, Blueprint cannot identify your user agent!
My gripe with this is why don’t Blueprint just try and handle it more gracefully? Why don’t they then just render the site you are visiting in plain (X)HTML or something and still try to display it rather than rendering an error page in (X)HTML that does co-incidentally works :P ? As I said, less than ideal. My advice would be to simply stay away from it, until such time that it is resolved, which I seriously doubt would be anytime soon.
Pity, since it is a good and solid idea!
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Software developer at Afrigator.com
Love Python, do PHP.
myphotographer 2:16 pm on February 12, 2009 Permalink |
hi stii, excuse my stupidity, but isn’t that why we have the TLD .mobi and basic templates so it will work across all phones and networks?
why would so many major companies have backed the .mobi thing if nothing was to come of it? I have absolutely no coding skills so could not drop the param part of http://www.capetownphotographer.param.mobi but put it together in about twenty mins just to see what it would be like, I tested it with ready.mobi, got a score of 4/5, so yeah, do you think .mobi is going anywhere other than the bin?
thanks ralph
ps if you visit the site from a comp u get directed to my pc site and from a phone you get the mobile site thing, still have to figure out how to drop the param part and obviously add better content and pics but as I said it was just a test, am looking for a .mobi dev for some tlds i purchased which I would like to get done just as a tester such as capetownphotographer.mobi and tablemountain.mobi
here are some .mobi sites I check on every now and again as i don’t yet have a smart phone.
foxnews.mobi
bbc.mobi
soccerladuma.mobi
Stii 5:04 pm on February 12, 2009 Permalink |
Hey myphotographer, no, .mobi is simply a domain extension like .com or .co.za. It has nothing to do with the rendering of your site on mobile phones whatsoever. Basically its purpose is that people more or less know that it is a mobile site due to the .mobi extension.
Justin Hartman 1:26 am on February 13, 2009 Permalink |
Yeah dude. If you look at my blog (which you have) you’ll see all the anomolies that people have had. Fundamentally it’s a flawed system and if yahoo want to make this work they better up their game.
Maybe we should write our own blueprint? One that actually works!!!
Justin Hartman 1:28 am on February 13, 2009 Permalink |
Ralph. Yeah the .mobi is just a domain. It’s up to you to render the site accordingly!
P
Stii 7:30 am on February 13, 2009 Permalink |
Man, if only we had time for such a venture. :P Apparently MIH Swat has been commissioned to develop such a library. I tried to talk to them yesterday to get an idea of when more or less, but they were unavailable. I’ll try again today.