Mobile Site Access Problems with Axim X5 Pocket PCs

[Jason Dunn]

If you're hitting our Web site with an Axim X5 running Pocket PC 2002, you'll notice that the site looks very strange and might load slowly - we recently updated some code on the mobile site to improve the formatting for 2003 SE devices, and somehow it broke the experience for X5 owners. Strangely enough, it seems to only affect X5 owners running Pocket PC 2002. On my X5 upgraded to 2003, it works perfectly - we tested the new code with other Pocket PC 2002 devices, including an iPAQ 3870, and there were no problems. We're trying to figure out why the X5 with 2002 is dysfunctional at rendering the mobile site, so if anyone has any insight we'd like to hear it. I'd also like to hear if any other devices are affected by the code change (I know AvantGo users were affected - we're looking into that as well).

[OSUKid7]

Hmm...well I may be restating the obvious, but it's got to be something in the client-side code (markup) you changed. I don't know how much that is, but check the javascript you changed, and raw html output. Any server-side php changes shouldn't affect it.

Just in my very quick glance through the source, I see you have some single quotes where there should be double quotes. For example,
<span class='news_option'>
should be
<span class="news_option">
However, I have yet to see a browser that doesn't understand both correctly.

I also see you have the following code,
<a href="#top" accesskey="0" />
Are accesskeys even supported in PIE? Really not sure.

Hope that helps. Good luck.

[Gerard]

Testing on my WM2003-upgraded X5 it works fine. But with my PPC2002 iPAQ 3835 using a Symbol Wi-Fi card to connect to a 2.5Mbps ADSL AP, it takes over a minute to finish loading and is approximately 87 page wide in Pocket IE - I might have lost count.

So no, it's not an X5-specific problem. Did I mention that PHP is annoying when trying to save pages in Pocket IE, as it, one cannot? MultiIE can't find them. But that's another problem...

I renamed the index.php file to .html once I found it in the cache, then launched that while still online. It took well over a minute, loaded some images, some placeholders, and all the text was without spaces. As in, allthewordswerestackedrightup. Could this be a useful clue? Perhaps something in the code is telling older PIE versions not to look at spaces between words, to ignore them? Just a thought. You see, PIE in PPC2002 cannot handle line breaks where there aren't any. Humongously-long links posted and not truncated (ie; when people de-select the parsing box) can be thread killers for PIE users. I don't know what sort of code would do this, sucking out the spaces, but perhaps this helps that wizard of yours.

------------

Oops, inaccurate reporting. Looking more carefully, with a whole lot of side-scrolling, I note that the longlinesofwordswithoutbreaks begins where it says this in the PhoneTools quote:

"Whereveryougo,PocketPhonetoolsallowsyoutoeasily..."

[Jason Dunn]

Thanks for the clues guys, much appreciated!

[Ed Hansberry]

Yeah, and someone around here was supposed to check this out on his 2002 Jornada 565 and forgot about it... :worried:



:oops:

[fireman2850]

Using Avantgo to sync the mobile page on a Kyocera 7135 phone (yes, a palm) results in the message "Insufficient memory to display page" and I am kicked back to the main Avantgo screen. Thought it might be something in the software but it started the same time your page was changed and I have exhausted every thing I could think of to try to fix it on my end.

[Hx4700]

Hi Jason,
With Avantgo I now just get a white page on my Hx4705. I went to the Avantgo site and deleted PPCT and then added PPCT back from this site. Still just get white screen. This also just happened a few days ago.
Ron...

[Jason Dunn]

We may have solved the problem for the Axim X5, or maybe for all of you - can you please give it another test?

[Gerard]

It works great for my old PPC2002 iPAQ 3835 now. Great work, seems you found the bug.

[Hx4700]

Jason-
You fixed the problem with the Avantgo white screen on my Hx4705.
You Da Man! :D
Ron...

[OSUKid7]

We may have solved the problem for the Axim X5, or maybe for all of you - can you please give it another test?
Cool. Any chance you'd tell us what the problem was? :)

[Jason Dunn]

Fabrizio discovered that one of the tags wasn't closed properly. <sigh> It's amazing how FRAGILE Web sites are, and how some browsers puke on even the smallest problem...

[OSUKid7]

Fabrizio discovered that one of the tags wasn't closed properly. <sigh> It's amazing how FRAGILE Web sites are, and how some browsers puke on even the smallest problem...
Ahh....that includes two things I was going to recommend -- check with Fabrizio, and validate the page at W3C.