RE: Best Practices document - not best practices

Since there's no way to change/enhance the browser client on many (or
most) of these devices, and a similar proportion won't support client
side programming (with JavaScript etc.) the best hope for these existing
devices is to improve the device capability databases and description
languages (e.g. the work of the MWI DDWG) and use this information
server-side to adapt the content as best as possible for the clients in
question.  The work of the W3C DIWG e.g. DISelect should of great
benefit here.
 
None of this solves the window size problem you mentioned earlier, but
devices where you can change the window-size are on the whole more
advanced, e.g. PCs, PDAs etc.  
 
So to start with a 'standard' mechanism for using client side
programming to send window size information to the servers could be
developed in parallel with a standard for future browsers to
automatically send this to headers.
 
Hopefully future browsers will also take advantage of the output of the
DIWG, so that some of the content adaptation can take place client side
as well, reducing the need for all content to be dynamically generated
by the servers.


________________________________

	From: Holley Kevin (Centre) [mailto:Kevin.Holley@O2.com] 
	Sent: 30 July 2005 17:56
	To: Tim Moss; michael@mxtelecom.com; public-bpwg@w3.org
	Subject: Re: Best Practices document - not best practices
	
	

	But is there anything else that could be done to help those
existing clients?
	
	Regards,
	
	Kevin
	
	
	--
	Kevin Holley
	O2 Group Technology
	Tel: +44 1473 782214 _ Fax: +44 7711 752031 _ Mobile: +44 7802
220811
	IM: kevinaholley (AIM/MSN/Y!/Skype)
	
	
	
	-----Original Message-----
	From: public-bpwg-request@w3.org <public-bpwg-request@w3.org>
	To: Holley Kevin (Centre) <Kevin.Holley@O2.com>;
michael@mxtelecom.com <michael@mxtelecom.com>; public-bpwg@w3.org
<public-bpwg@w3.org>
	Sent: Sat Jul 30 17:17:34 2005
	Subject: RE: Best Practices document - not best practices
	
	Certainly going forwards, but it probably won't help many of the
millions if not billions of clients already out there!
	
	
	
	  _____ 
	
	From: Holley Kevin (Centre) [mailto:Kevin.Holley@O2.com]
	Sent: 30 July 2005 17:05
	To: Tim Moss; michael@mxtelecom.com; public-bpwg@w3.org
	Subject: Re: Best Practices document - not best practices
	
	
	
	So isn't this something the W3C can fix, to create a standard
for window display advice from client to server?
	
	Regards,
	
	Kevin
	
	
	--
	Kevin Holley
	O2 Group Technology
	Tel: +44 1473 782214 _ Fax: +44 7711 752031 _ Mobile: +44 7802
220811
	IM: kevinaholley (AIM/MSN/Y!/Skype)
	
	
	
	-----Original Message-----
	From: Tim Moss <Tim@bango.com>
	To: Holley Kevin (Centre) <Kevin.Holley@O2.com>;
michael@mxtelecom.com <michael@mxtelecom.com>; public-bpwg@w3.org
<public-bpwg@w3.org>
	Sent: Sat Jul 30 16:40:03 2005
	Subject: RE: Best Practices document - not best practices
	
	Its not generally possible for the server to detect window size
without help from the client.  Some browsers may send this information
automatically in custom headers but most don't.  I'm not aware of a
'standard' way of sending this info to the server.
	
	JavaScript or similar could be used to determine the window size
client side, but this information then needs to be sent to the server
for it to be able to do anything with this information which is likely
to require another round trip.
	
	The same is largely true about display capability; the server
can lookup device capability information for mobile devices, and get a
reasonably accurate answer providing the client sends enough information
in the request headers (e.g. user agent, reference to UAProf file) but
this won't work for laptops, PCs where different resolution screens can
be plugged in to them.
	
	With the more capable mobile devices where additional software
can be installed, there's no guarantee that a third party browser has
the same display capabilities as the standard browser on that device,
and often the display capabilities of a browser differ from the physical
screen resolution, browsers often take up screen space to show titles,
scroll bars, margins etc.
	
	
	
	
	
	
	Tim Moss
	CTO
	Bango
	
	m: +44 78 8779 4032
	t: +44 12 2347 2823
	w: http://www.bango.com <http://www.bango.com/>
	
	
	Mobile Content World 2005
	
******************************************************************
	"Come and see us on stand 14 at MCW 2005
	Olympia Conference Centre, London, UK
	13th - 15th September 2005"
	 <http://www.mobilecontentworld.biz/> www.mobilecontentworld.biz
	
	
	
	  _____
	
	From: public-bpwg-request@w3.org
[mailto:public-bpwg-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Holley Kevin (Centre)
	Sent: 30 July 2005 10:07
	To: michael@mxtelecom.com; public-bpwg@w3.org
	Subject: Re: Best Practices document - not best practices
	
	
	
	Thanks Michael, Daniel,
	
	so it sounds like one best practice is to use a separate
stylesheet and not put that information in the header.
	
	I have another question though.
	
	Is it possible for the server to detect the size of window in
use - as opposed to the display capability?
	
	Regards,
	
	Kevin
	
	
	--
	Kevin Holley
	O2 Group Technology
	Tel: +44 1473 782214 _ Fax: +44 7711 752031 _ Mobile: +44 7802
220811
	IM: kevinaholley (AIM/MSN/Y!/Skype)
	
	
	
	-----Original Message-----
	From: public-bpwg-request@w3.org <public-bpwg-request@w3.org>
	To: public-bpwg@w3.org <public-bpwg@w3.org>
	Sent: Wed Jul 27 20:58:04 2005
	Subject: Re: Best Practices document - not best practices
	
	
	Daniel Barclay wrote:
	
	>
	> Holley Kevin (Centre) wrote:
	>
	>> ....  When looking at the WURFL site I
	>> note that the real content of the page (not the links or the
photos but
	>> the meat of the page ... i.e. text about WURFL ...)  ... is
towards the
	>> bottom of the HTML.  I rather suspect that HTML tools
deliberately put
	>> "meat" text at the bottom of the HTML.  Why is this?
	>
	>
	> If you're talking about CSS style information that is embedded
in an HTML
	> document, it's at the top of the document because of HTML
format:  The
	> STYLE element has to be within the HEAD element, which is
comes before
	> the
	> BODY element.
	
	Also, if you don't have your rendering metadata before you start
	receiving your data, then you really have to wait until the end
of the
	document to render anything. This leads to bad error handling
(you can't
	display a partial document) and slow page load times (you cannot
begin
	to render until the last byte has arrived).
	
	Keeping the styling information at the top, or somehow first to
the
	rendering engine means that you can display content as soon as
you get
	it. Whether this is by putting it inline (like the wurfl site
does) or
	external to the page (like an xsl stylesheet, or a css link), it
has to
	be better.
	
	Michael
	
	
	
	
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Received on Sunday, 31 July 2005 08:59:03 UTC