Single Source Website for Full Spectrum Access

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Single Source Website for Full Spectrum Access

• Rick EllsUniversity of Washingtonrells_at_cac.washi
  ngton.eduhttp//staff.washington.edu/rells/

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Across the spectrum

• People can access your Web content with a wide
  range of devices. Can they read it? Is it useful
  to them?

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UW Home Page on FireFox
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Single source

• How far can you go with a single source store in
  supporting the growing range of access devices?
• How far do you want to go in supporting the
  growing range of access devices?

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Device independence

• Standards based designs are flexible
• separation of content and presentation
• CSS control of presentation
• Device independence has been a basic principle
  Web technology since the beginning

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WAP and XHTML MP

• Wireless Application Protocol (WAP)
• WAP 1
• Wireless Markup Language (WML)
• Dying rapidly, no new WML development
• WAP 2
• XHTML Mobile Profile
• Nearly all devices sold today are WAP 2.0
  devices and they can access ordinary sites, not
  just XHTML-MP and WML sites - Cameron Moll

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The mobile context

• Is the phone mobile, or the user?
• When you are mobile, what kinds of tasks do you
  want to do?
• Tasks immediatelyrelevant to now, here, whats
  happening

Photo from cs4fn.org
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Miniaturized or mobilized?
SouthWest Airlines Mobile Check In Page
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One design for all?
Strongly contrasting design approaches!
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UW Home Page on a Palm TX
Flex design flowing into a small space
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Technology will fix things?

• The capabilities of mobile devices are rapidly
  improving
• Standards-based sites will be usable on more and
  more devices
• Standards compliant
• Validated
• Div and semantic structure
• Separation of content and presentation

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What iPhones want
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UW Home Page on an iPhone
Just pinch open to zoom in
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Use media to target formatting?

• Stylesheet with a media type of handheld
• typetext/css mediahandheld /
• Styling appropriate to a mobile device, including
  turning off display of some divisions
• ads display none
• Seems to offer a simple way to sense device type

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Problems with Handheld

• Spotty implementation (not widely or consistently
  used)
• Too general
• Wide variety of mobile devices identify
  themselves as handheld
• iPhone identifies itself as screen
• Apple recommends basing conditional styles for
  the iPhone on screen size, not media type

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Device detection

• Check user agent string from mobile device
• Compare to table of device types
• Wireless Universal Resource File
  (http//wurfl.sourceforge.net/)
• Contains XML data of device characteristics
• Generate page appropriate to device abilities

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Emerging Strategy

• Standards based single source for conventional
  browsers and newer PDAs and smartphones
• Use device detection to send appropriate pages to
  less capable devices and small screens

Device Detection
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Alternative strategy

• Maintain two separate stores?
• When is it appropriate to develop an independent
  set of pages for small devices?

Device Detection
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What pages should be full-spectrum functional?

• Auth/auth
• Directory
• Calendar
• News
• Contacts
• Emergency information

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Google Calendar on a Palm TX
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Weblogin on a Palm TX
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Conclusions

• Standards-based methods cover a wide range of
  devices
• Mobiles are used in a different context,
  requiring different designs
• Frequent use during the day for brief periods
  each time
• Provide services for here, now, and whats
  happening
• Small mobiles may require separate pages to
  support their different function

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Thoughts

• Single source for full spectrum access is
  possible, but it will get complicated if you are
  to fully support the best role of services
  delivered on small devices
• Key pages should be usable by the full spectrum
  of devices
• Core interactive services (directories,
  calendars, auth/auth pages)
• Rich media and rich applications are designed for
  specific parts of the spectrum or families of
  devices
• Apps provide higher interactivity, but are
  tailored to specific devices

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Tri-spectrum thinking
Screen size is only onedimension of the
designspace of Web deliveredinformation and
services.
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Deeper thoughts

• Mobile devices are about users who are mobile
• The devices will keep changing and improving
• The browser is not the Web
• Applications can connect to the APIs of services,
  delivering information without the use of a
  browser