Creating a PDA version of my website

[leonievs]

Hi there,

I have been looking for some information on how to create pages for a PDA / mobile phones / WAP, so far not very succesful... I can not find some basic info on how to do this.

Is there a tool that I can use or do I have to create complete new pages?

Is there a maximum or advised width like they do here: http://www.nu.nl/pda.jsp or is everything to 100% better?

Is there software where you can check what it will look like if you do not have a PDA yourself?
What is best: pda.website.com or website.com/pda.jsp etc

Anyone has experience with this?

[iwebgeek]

Cameron Moll is pioneering it right now. He has created several PDA optimized websites for some corporations.

Check his site out, you'll find blog posts about mobile web in the archives.

[xhtml]

The best solution is:

http://www.1computer.info/1work_demo_en.html

For more example and information see this link:
http://www.1computer.info/1work_internet_en.html

- Xhtml1.1, CSS, RSS, XML
- Change size fonts with CTRL+
- Print directly with your Browser
- Change and modifiy directly with PDA
- And more.....

[xhtml]

The best solution is 1Work:

http://www.1computer.info/1work_demo_en.html

for more example:

http://www.1computer.info/1work_internet_en.html

• - Xhtml1.1, CSS, RSS, XML
  - Update directyl with mobile phone or PDA
  - Print directly with browser
  - Change size fonts with CTRL+
  - And more....

[bconley]

Google has a tool that creates a version of a web page into a pda friendly page just by entering a URL into the form field. I am not sure if it what you are looking for but it is worth a look.

http://www.google.com/gwt/n


Another site that does a similar thing but not all of the pages seem to be working correctly.
http://www.IYHY.com/


You can also find a tutorial on WAP and WML here:
http://www.w3schools.com/wap/

[Andilinks]

Does anyone know the size (number of users) and growth rate of this format and whether advertising works well with it?

[arkmobile]

I just created a mobile tracking tool for my company, it's much easier than i expected. I found everything i needed on this site WAP TUTORIAL.

Here is my advice.
1. Read the site above
2. Download Opera browser to emulate a Mobile Device
3. Add this code if you want to redirect IE or Firefox to an HTML page.

Using JSP put the following snipit in the header:

String acc = request.getHeader("Accept");
if (acc.indexOf("wml") == -1){
(response.SC_MOVED_TEMPORARILY);
response.setHeader("Location", "http://yourHTMLsite");
}

Check out my page at www.luggageforward.com/mobile using your phone, your browser, or whatever.

[espectations]

Hi Andilinks,

You can get some free stats at this link

We just built a site News media release where a wap page is created automatically for each release posted.

Users could then use Web SMS to send the WAP bookmark (article or press release url) to mobile phones. I tested it on my Nokia 6680 and it works like a charm. I think this service will be quite popular amongst traveling journalists.

The adoption of WAP is still fairly slow worldwide but having been in the industry for 6 years I see a sharp increase this year. I get a lot of enquiries already for MMS but GPRS networks are not yet available in all countries. We are still dependent on the networks to launch GPRS so that we could provide the services.

In South Africa one network already allows GPRS while the other is beta testing for MMS, so it is very frustrating.

The other factor that plays a role is handset conversion. Users have to change their old handsets to one that accommodates GPRS and WAP accounts.

I also noticed a strange "fear" of costs involved but as people get used to it that fear will subside. When sms first showed up there was also a resistance to use it and now it is one of the most used ways for communication.

[thepcman]

try this...
FREE WAP Page Creator

It should be able to get you started although you can use it as a finished page if you need a small number of pages.

[thepcman]

try this...
FREE WAP Page Creator

It should be able to get you started although you can use it as a finished page if you need a small number of pages.

[Andilinks]

Thanks for these references. The content of my site (or at least large parts of it) lends itself well to mobile use, but the design so far has prevented this. It looks like Blackberry is the most used platform and probably the best demographic so I'll buy one of these and design for it. I'm still not sure how I'll monetize it, I don't think ordinary AdSense blocks will work. I don't like AdLinks because they look too much like navigation, but I may have to go with them.

Thanks again, Andi

[lanthus]

There are HD-screens and LD-screens, and old-fashion radioshack-tv-screens (ULD) ... PDA's, and, probably still one Lynx browser out there ....

But--

"All the compatibility in the world is incompatible, if everybody does it their own way ...."

So, I say, Compatibility is a Server responsibility: The website server needs to detect what kind of http html-formatting is needed, and send that ... Graphic resolution is the most obvious concern but secondary image-tunneling has been long neglected: Scrollbars, right-button-grabbers (eg. pdf), crotch-rubbers[*], finger-wiggle-pads as soon as they get invented, and so on, are work-arounds: The basic constraint is:--

"All the view that's fit to display."

HTML tried to do that by line-wrapping ... and that worked for text, on Lynx-screens, HD, PDA's ... but not for images ....

And then there were spreadsheets: Horizontal scroll;

So, Somebody way-back-when invented the low-src, but tif's and gif's and jpg's weren't "embedded" images, (though early gif's did have interleave capability), so that took even more bandwidth, more html-writing, and website management and ultimately "deprecation."

But, Now,--

If we turn this around, We see that Flash is popular on almost every machine sold: It's structured to put everything in a window, with action.... But embedded imaging, eg. SPIHT, JPEG-2000, is yet less-known, so ordinary images aren't PDA-ready: yet. (Embedded jpg 2000 is still a server responsibility for clients on constraints,- or when the human-user wants to stop.)

So,--

The original question reduces to display management: It's not easy to fit two buttons on a PDA spiculum;- like using chopsticks: three fingers or two .... You could put a slider on each side:- one clumsy button.

And you probably want to think in terms of Flash not HTML for PDA's.

Ray

* [Right-button-grabber is a funny phrase, but, When did you ever see a mousetail come out its snout...?- They could have called them cheeky albino ardvaarks. I call them, rovots....!]

"Click."

[Andilinks]

No, I don't want to detect browsers for PDA's. I am going to create a separate PDA version and make it different enough that I won't have duplicate pages.

But I'm going to keep it low key until I start to see significant traffic on the PDA version, which will be designed after I've spent seven days in my car, at the mall, and down by the lake using my PDA to access stuff important in those locations.

Ok, that's enough thinking out loud, the rest of my plans are secret.

[leonievs]

Thanks for all your information...
Going to work on it right now.

[TrafficProducer]

Try this link

[TrafficProducer]

Try this link:-
WAP, WML, Wireless Markup Language and other Wireless links e.g. Wi-Fi, BlueTooth