Re: After Access – Challenges Facing Mobile-OnlyInternet Users in the Developing World

Shwetank,
I got super excited when I heard that, but I just tried browsing those sites
on Opera Mini 5 beta on my Android phone (Nexus One, running Froyo, bought
in the US), and the unicode fonts at aajtak.com (or a few other sites I
tried) don't display properly. If it will after configuration, that could be
huge!

Let me know,
Prabhas


On Tue, Jul 6, 2010 at 6:16 AM, Shwetank Dixit <shwetankd@opera.com> wrote:

> This has at least *partly* have to do with the way developers include fonts
> in web pages. If the page uses Unicode, then at least in Opera Mini and
> Mobile (and most probably, most other major mobile browsers), there
> shouldn't be a problem (for example, aajtak.com uses unicode to display
> hindi fonts, works fine)
>
> However, many people use .EOT fonts to display regional indian language
> text in web pages. The problem with that is that .EOT fonts only work with
> Internet Explorer, and thus can't be displayed properly even by other
> desktop browsers, let alone mobile ones.
>
> Prashant: I don't know whether the local indian language fonts on
> mobisitegalore use unicode or not. If it does, and it still doesn't display
> properly on Opera Mini/mobile, then please let me know off-list, and I'll
> investigate the issue further.
>
>
> On Tue, 06 Jul 2010 15:20:27 +0530, Stephane Boyera <boyera@w3.org> wrote:
>
>  Hi Prashanth,
>>
>> This is a very good point. I believe that there is not much attention from
>> the I18N community on the support of languages in mobile browser. This is
>> something that i've on my agenda. As a first step i discussed recently with
>> a colleague and we will develop a doc around the key elements to deliver
>> content in a specific languages.
>>
>> Steph
>>
>> Le 06/07/2010 04:42, Prashanth a écrit :
>>
>>> Dear Stephane,
>>>
>>> As far as India is concerned the biggest issue is rendering of local
>>> language fonts in the mobile browsers. Note that I am not even pointing
>>> to user having to key in text in local languages, but very unfortunately
>>> the Indian fonts do not even get displayed in the mobile browser.
>>> Today we have over 80,000 mobile websites created using our tool
>>> www.mobisitegalore.com and over 50% come from India, but there is no way
>>> that they can created a mobile website in Hindi or Tamil because the
>>> fonts would just not render in the mobile browser.
>>> This is an important missing link as most people in India cannot read
>>> English.
>>>
>>> Warm regards
>>> S.Prashanth
>>> CEO
>>> www.akmin.com
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 05-Jul-2010 5:17 PM, Stephane Boyera wrote:
>>>
>>>> Dear All,
>>>> i want to share with you a very good paper from S. Gitau, J. Donner
>>>> and G. Marsden.
>>>> The paper is attached
>>>> References are:
>>>> Gitau, Shikoh, Marsden, Gary, & Donner, Jonathan. (2010). After access
>>>> - Challenges facing mobile-only internet users in the developing
>>>> world. Proceedings of the 28th international conference on human
>>>> factors in computing systems (CHI 2010) (pp. 2603-2606). New York: ACM.
>>>>
>>>> One of the first papers i see focusing on the barriers of using mobile
>>>> web in developing countries by people without PC access and experience.
>>>> Some good suggestions for operators and other players.
>>>>
>>>> Steph
>>>>
>>>
>>
>
> --
> Shwetank Dixit
> Web Evangelist,
> Site Compatibility / Developer Relations / Consumer Products Group
> Member - W3C Mobile Web for Social Development (MW4D) Group
> Member - Web Standards Project (WaSP) - International Liaison Group
> Opera Software - www.opera.com
>
> Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/
>
>
>


-- 
Prabhas Pokharel

MobileActive.org
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