URLs and access issues

Hello, MWI; I've been attempting to find some
information on the recognized 'media' types from the
<link rel="stylesheet" /> tag, and I stumbled across
this thread; forgive me if I cover any territory
that's been covered in other threads, but

Generally speaking, I think the whole, one URL, one
site issue is the ideal situation. The whole reason
companies purchase and occasionally litigate over
various domain names is the easily remembered
association between a site  secondary domain and a
particular concept (ie, aol, badbreath, google, etc.).
In the US, we've pretty much affixed ".com" to this
concept, but the concept should apply as easily to,
for example ".co.uk".

My point: the user shouldn't have to remember 2 web
sites. Ssome in have enough problem differentiating
between ".net", ".biz" and ".org", and that goes as
much for companies registering the domains as the
users. The onus of matching content to the browser
device should be handled by the web designer, either
by reading the HTTP_USER_AGENT data and assembling and
redirecting or, better yet, by structuring the site
well and applying appropriate stylesheets.

As I said, I came to this thread looking for
information on the development of the "handheld" media
type for stylesheet links, in hopes of suggesting (or
discovering whether it had been suggested) that an
additional media type be added to discriminate between
handheld devices such as PalmPilots and handheld
devices such as mobile phones, which offer vastly
different capacities in terms of screen size,
rendering capabilities, browsing ease, etc.

CSS was created intended to allow HTML to focus on
site structure, while the CSS handled the
presentation. With a suitable group of stylesheets and
a well structured site, any url should be visitable by
any device. Each device/user should come with a
default stylesheet which is applied for that
device/type when no alternative is supplied by the
site; this is how screen type web browsers have worked
since the introduction of CSS.

Can't display or don't want images? Suppress them in
the stylesheet. As images and other multimedia objects
(eg. .swf, .mp3, .moo),  the primary bandwidth hogs,
are fetched in a second step only after the initial
text/html is fetched, simply suppressing them solves
quite a bit of the bandwidth/speed problem inherit in
browsing on a mobile phone.

Most designers don't offer alternate stylesheets for
alternate media, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't.
If the default appearance of a site on a particular
platform/UA is extremely bad, then the user probably
won't be back. It's up to the designer to ensure a
site is adequately viewable/navigable across all
platforms and media types. I use Firefox on the Mac,
but I've got to design my sites to be viewable on
Wintel computers running Internet Explorer on a
monitor with a brightness that's absurdly low, even
when properly adjusted (the monitor issue of which I
still run afoul).

So, my points (I do have some; really, I do) is that
one URL and even one protocol is and should be enough.

However, this requires that all devices recognize a
common ML, and this is one of the problems I want to
address. My information may be slightly out of date,
but three of the biggest cellular MLs recognized are
XHTML-Basic, CHTML, and WML. XHTML-Basic and CHTML
include many of the structurally significant HTMl
tags, which makes WML the oddman out. Obviously,
there's a fair amount of investment in temrs of time
and technology in WML, but over the course of a few
years, if more content is viewable in a particular ML,
gradually that will be adopted (even if maybe it's not
as 'good'; cf VHS v Beta).

The other problem I wanted to address is the
differentiation between handheld devices; the browser
experience on a cell phone is different from that on a
PalmPilot or even a BlackBerry. "handheld" as a
stylesheet media type is inadequate.

To illustrate my point (and the whole thing which led
me to this group in the first place), I've been
working on a site (pardon me if this next part smacks
of a shill, but I've got to include the links so the
group can see my point) for a restaurant,
http://lafornaretta.net.

Compare the normal home page with two other versions,
http://lafornaretta.net/handheld.php4, which is
targeted at palm-type devices, with touch screen
navigation, and http://lafornaretta.net/wireless.php4,
intended for color mobile phone type devices.
Unfortunately, I only have emulation for the home
page, but if you've got the appropriate device, it
recognizes XHTML-Basic compliant tags, and
(!important) its UA selects the right stylesheet, the
whole site should be viewable with the 'wireless'
style.

The sole difference in the source code between the
emulations are the stylesheets. The 'handheld' 
experience includes all the information in the site
sans the images; the 'wireless' experience reduces the
site to the abbreviated address, phone and fax numbers
and hours for the two sites, the information a mobile
user is most likely to be seeking. The looks of the
sites are necessarily different, but through color and
layout, I believe much of the feel of the
computer/screen experience is maintained.

One URL.

So, my opinion on the topic, for what it's worth: One
URL, one protocol, one mark-up language; stylesheets
(either UA default or site provided) handle formatting
of the content; the designer allows for different
browsers in the design (or suffers the consequence for
not doing so with fewer repeat visits); and 'handheld'
is an inadequate media type descriptor for the
diversity of handheld devices which permit web access.



Contact:
Brett Doelling
2933 2nd Ave Apt 109
Seattle WA 98121
206.256.6221
bret_douglass@yahoo.com

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Received on Sunday, 25 September 2005 03:43:24 UTC