OK but it sounds like you are being (admirably) obsessive about getting your design onto every browser. As I already said, CSS is desigend to fail gracefully, so it is possible to build sites that work everywhere using CSS, provided you are willing to accept that not all browsers are going to present the complete design as originally intended.
Incidentally, I checkout out your site on my PocketPC and it suffers from my biggest pet hate when viewing content on a Pocket PC. You have your links menu at the top of the page, so every time I hit a new page I have to scroll down until I locate the content. Maybe that's deliberare design, but if it is it's a pain, IMHO. When browsing with the PDA, I tend to avoid sites that are so unfriendly.
>provided you are willing to accept that not all browsers are going to present the complete design
So why bother at all then? I would be ok with this only if my content would not be viewable on about 20% of the mobile browsers. But when you are only going to render on 20% of them (or maybe less), then it's a useless effort IMHO. As I said, there will be a time (in 4-5 years from now) where all phones will have good CSS support and that by then it will be a good idea to use CSS instead of cHTML (I even plan to rewrite the osnews mobile code in CSS by then). It's just that the CSS time hasn't come yet for mobile browsers. What I am arguing here is simply a reality check.
>You have your links menu at the top of the page, so every time I hit a new page I have to scroll down
HUH?
The links menu is about 25 pixels thick! You DON'T have to scroll to start reading. Here is my proof on a QVGA screen (using a Zaurus here, but it's the same on PIE): http://mobits.com/images/portfolio1.png
And also, don't forget the poor phone users on their 128x128 screens. When they start using the site, they must be presented with the menu, and also, after you read the page and you are now all the way down, the menu re-appears on the bottom. Having the menu on both the top and the bottom is one of the most important usability points when creating a page for phones.
>When browsing with the PDA, I tend to avoid sites that are so unfriendly.
You know, OSNews' mobile pages are some of the most friendly mobile pages out there. Instead of actually be a white page with some links in it (like most "mobile" sites look like), it actually has a design. And it works! I am proud of osnews' mobile pages, because it is possibly the only web site out there that has such a compatibility rate, without using WURFL. I research the user agents all by myself and within a year I had a faster solution than WURFL. Which is exactly what led me and a friend to start a company about it and license our solution (the autodetection part).
Instead of actually be a white page with some links in it (like most "mobile" sites look like), it actually has a design. And it works! I am proud of osnews' mobile pages, because it is possibly the only web site out there that has such a compatibility rate, without using WURFL.
That's your choice. But the page will still be viable on everything if you use CSS ... and usable.
Quote:
>You have your links menu at the top of the page, so every time I hit a new page I have to scroll down
HUH?
The links menu is about 25 pixels thick! You DON'T have to scroll to start reading. Here is my proof on a QVGA screen (using a Zaurus here, but it's the same on PIE): http://mobits.com/images/portfolio1.png
Well - there's your proof of how you expect it to work. With your logo and all that menu stuff, two thirds of the screen is used up. Obviously you are happy with that, but I would not be.
But here's the rub. Wanna see what I see on my VGA E830 without making any changes to the settings I use every day?
So you can see why I was ticked off.
I checked the page out on my E750, which runs WM 2003. On that, your page looks like your screen shot.
On my E830, running in SE_VGA mode, using PocketIE Plus, your menu is always at the top as shown when I use Pocket View. When I use Standard View, none of the default PocketIE views gives a view like you showed - Default and Desktop have the menu at the side (fine) and One Column goes back to an unsatisfactory long menu ant the top of the page.
Quote:
And also, don't forget the poor phone users on their 128x128 screens. When they start using the site, they must be presented with the menu, and also, after you read the page and you are now all the way down, the menu re-appears on the bottom. Having the menu on both the top and the bottom is one of the most important usability points when creating a page for phones.
For phones, yep. But as you can see, I am not using a phone. I hope the menu is more friendly for phones than either your or my PDA shots ...
Quote:
>When browsing with the PDA, I tend to avoid sites that are so unfriendly.
You know, OSNews' mobile pages are some of the most friendly mobile pages out there.
Maybe so, but that doesn't make me have fewer gripes with it.
Quote:
Instead of actually be a white page with some links in it (like most "mobile" sites look like), it actually has a design. And it works! I am proud of osnews' mobile pages, because it is possibly the only web site out there that has such a compatibility rate, without using WURFL. I research the user agents all by myself and within a year I had a faster solution than WURFL. Which is exactly what led me and a friend to start a company about it and license our solution (the autodetection part).
You have every right to be proud, and I am not criticising your effort or your energy. Clearly you and I have different ideas of usability, and I would suggest your detection part is not foolproof.
Steve, the screenshot you got there is NOT normal. You are getting the NON-mobile page of osnews (which of course would look bad on a PDA). PocketIEPlus obviously does NOT use a standard user agent, OR, you have TWEAKED its user agent (which is a very bad thing for proper autodetection).
Please go to this URL www.osnews.com/ua.php wtih your PPC and copy/paste for me what you get there, and so I can investigage what's going on!
It looks like you're getting the desktop version of OSNews with your screenshot on the E830. Are you sure PIE Plus isn't fooling the website into thinking that it's IE5.5?
I just downloaded and installed PIEPlus on my x50v. The DEFAULT user agent of PIEPlus is the same as Pocket IE's. OSNews works _perfectly_ with it and recognizes it as a mobile browser!
But you have obviously tweaked its settings to identify as either IE 5.5 or 6.0. I just did so, and indeed, when you change the user agent, you can't get the mobile version anymore. This is the correct behavior. Both the browser and the site work as intended when you do that. But of course, as a mobile user, you don't always want to do that. You should only use the modified user agent for (bad) sites that don't allow you to go through with an action if you are not a desktop IE. But don't use that for normal browsing!
Steve; what did you use to either capture or post-process that e830 screenshot? Was it PQV perchance? Whatever it was, it crashes my WM2003SE e800 in Pockett IE every time I try to load this thread page with images turned on. Talk about browser un-friendly!
In my experience of PPC-based image editing/capture software, only GIF files saved using Pocket Quick View (PQV, by Larry Bank, no longer in development for well over two years) causes PIE to fail with spontaneous closings. Larry never addressed the problem. I had taken many screenshots of several devices using PQV, had uploaded them to my server and used them in many forums... so I had a bit of a job of re-saving to do (used Pocket XnView which does a lovely job) once I isolated the source of the problem. Could you re-save that GIF using something other than what you did, anad re-upload it? I'm curious about how osnews is formatting in your device. Looks good on my e800.
I just downloaded and installed PIEPlus on my x50v. The DEFAULT user agent of PIEPlus is the same as Pocket IE's. OSNews works _perfectly_ with it and recognizes it as a mobile browser! But you have obviously tweaked its settings to identify as either IE 5.5 or 6.0.
I have to chime in here and agree with Eugenia - as Web site owners, we can work hard to create optimized layouts for mobile devices, but the second that someone hacks their user agent string to tell a Web server that their mobile device is not really a mobile device, they make it very difficult for us to deliver an optimized experience. I *think* there's a way to do secondary sniffing - I think we implemented that here, where we sniff for the browser type AND the operating system. But it's not ideal, and if people want good mobile experiences on their devices, they should not hack the user agent string.
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