Vodafone Move Invites Web Development Chaos 192
hoagiecat writes "Web developers want mobile phone users to be able to access their sites, but mobile browsers generally choke on heavyweight HTML put together for traditional Web browsers. A host of services have sprung up that allow two sites — one for mobile users, one for PC users — to coexist at the same URL, with the browser's user agent string distinguishing between the two. Vodafone has come at the problem from the other end, offering a new service that translates traditional Web pages into mobile-friendly ones on the fly — but it strips out the user agent in the process, breaking sites designed around the other strategy. And Web developers are mad. Will similar moves by other carriers disrupt this nascent Web development ecosystem?"
Re:Neat! Can I access the cell-page with a compute (Score:3, Informative)
So what else is new? (Score:4, Informative)
Companies that are on Vodafone's "white list," which is a group of Vodafone-approved services, were notified of the change and the operator is passing the user agent correctly for those services, developers say.
The issue at Vodafone is they need a revenue engine that cannot be hampered so they artificially create one. With the recent court rulings over VoIP services like Truphone, Vodafone is seeing disruptive technologies come into play. This is just business doing the right thing for itself but not for the customer.
For what it is worth, within the group of people I work with (about 2000 people), many of us are using Truphone over the wireless broadband we are provided. Suddenly, my 400-600 pound mobile bills are now down to 50/month with loads of unused minutes rolling over. The story is similar with many other people here and across other networks. Are you surprised?
Possible workarounds? (Score:1, Informative)
2. If there's no user-agent, output the simplest page possible. "But then clients with no user-agent get a simple page," you say. So? If they know enough to strip their user-agent, they might appreciate a simpler site anyway, and they should be able to understand the issue, at least.
Anyway, why would developers be annoyed? If a browser breaks your site, and you're following standards, the blame is on the browser, not on the developer. If it's just impossible to workaround this, it's not your concern. This thing doesn't have market share like IE, so I don't see the big deal.
Mobile sites are (usually) pointless (Score:5, Informative)
Don't I know it. I use a BlackBerry to surf the web most mornings on the train, and I see these all the time. I've learned to avoid some links specifically because I don't want to waste my time trying to navigate a crappy mobile version of a site. For example, I no longer click on any Reuters or USA Today news links on Slashdot or Digg, because rather serve me the article I asked for, these sites entirely ignore the URL I sent it and drop me on their mobile page, from which (I guess) I'm expected to navigate to the thing I originally wanted. Unfortunately the mobile page contains links to news categories and a list of the most popular stories, and it's usually impossible to find the one I wanted. Many news sites use similar services. The big provider seems to be Crisp Wireless [crispwireless.com], which proudly announces its responsibility for this crapiness at the bottom of each mobile page.
My newest pet peeve is the BBC News site. If I type "news.bbc.co.uk" in my desktop browser I get the BBC News page. But on my BlackBerry the site ignores the URL and "helpfully" redirects me to a page where I can select whether I want their Mobile or Desktop edition. It's nice that I at least get an option, but it adds a page load to the process of simply reading the news. And when I select the Desktop link they send me to the main BBC site, not the News site, so I get to make a third page load when I click on the News link to visit the page I originally requested about a minute ago.
How are these mobile sites supposed to help us again?
User Agent Stylesheets (Score:5, Informative)
All that needs to be done is to serve up a different style sheet depending on the user agent, or a default 'safe' stylesheet, or none at all.
Determining which style sheet to use will necessitate peeking at the user-agent so Vodaphones approach could be problematical. Maybe if they had a meta tag to tell their gizmo not to process the site.
Good question - also Handheld CSS media descriptor (Score:3, Informative)
'Handheld' is such a descriptor.
Provided the device supports this and use the correct stylesheet there shouldn't be any need to do anything else.
Re:So what else is new? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:User Agent Stylesheets (Score:5, Informative)
As someone who's been through that: it doesn't work.
You see, the mobile stylesheet has suspiciously many entries of "display:none" if you go this way. Which means you discard many of the non-essential elements for the mobile version and reorder the rest to fit a mobile screen, but the mobile users still download the entire damn thing.
And downloading things you don't even SEE is far from perfect for the expensive/slow access points on a mobile device.
Certainly nice that CSS has the feature, but it's not the ultimate solution.
Re:Mobile sites are (usually) pointless (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, I think in the case of the BBC site if I were to bookmark the resultant page I'd be able to find it directly again. The BlackBerry provides a list of recently-entered URLs and "news.bbc.co.uk" is still there from when it used to work. Yes, their page might be noticing the BlackBerry in the UserAgent string where they wouldn't have noticed your device - or maybe your bookmark helps.
BlackBerrys use a lot less bandwidth than standard POP3 or IMAP (or HTTP) connections, which is one of the things people like about them. There are advantages and disadvantages, but generally I like the service (and the device).
Re:How does this make sense? (Score:3, Informative)
It's not just about display, it's about connectivity.
Even relatively "clean" pages like Slashdot's main non-mobile site are too bloated to be easily usable over a GPRS connection.
Re:Neat! Can I access the cell-page with a compute (Score:1, Informative)
If so then no , its only for adjusting the layout and will in most cases result in the same stuff being downloaded.
A clever client could try to avoid downloading things that weren't going to be dispayed but most don't ( this is
also a way to pre-cache things).
personally i would do a simple standards compliant page that works on both , its hardly rocket science .
Convincing the marketing people not to fill it with crap is far far harder tho.
Re:Easy (Score:3, Informative)
This sounds good at first blush, but it really isn't an ideal solution. I live in Japan and I have one of the latest au cell phones. It gets TV, I can use the camera to take pictures of Japanese characters and look them up in the included English/Japanese dictionary. And I can browse both normal "PC" (as the phone refers to it) websites and mobile sites.
I always, always, always use the mobile sites. Since I get charged by the packet, the mobile sites are much better because they are built to be low bandwidth (not to mention they're usually focused on the cellphone - the Final Fantasy site, for example, lets you purchase cell phone games and ring tones). I'd get killed (literally death by packets) if I browsed real web sites on the phone as the data transfer would KILL me (well sort of - the maximum I can get charged for more data is around $40).