Re: Interfacing mobileOK checker/markup validator

Hi Dom,

I've been following the mobile checker list. Excited to see it go in  
beta soon!

On Feb 8, 2008, at 01:09 , Dominique Hazael-Massieux wrote:
> Given that you've already gone through the pain of doing so with the
> markup validator, it would seem like a waste of effort to implement a
> something similar in the mobileok checker.

Right, I'd rather we had tools communicate than duplicate code, unless  
there is a massive performance gain.

> The main obstacle is that the mobileOK checker has a set of well- 
> defined
> HTTP headers (User-Agent, Accept and Accept-Charset [3]), and many
> mobile sites rely on these parameters to send an appropriate response
> back.

If I understand correctly, there is a need for the UA checking the  
online resources to clearly identify itself as a mobile agent, so that  
proper content adaptation/selection on the server side take place, and  
it would be important that the markup validator do so?

I guess that is feasible. I am not a big fan of advertizing the User- 
Agent strings of our checking tools because some people will make sure  
that the validators get valid content while others still get crap (or,  
in the case of ASP.net driven sites, the opposite) but I understand  
your needs.

> I don't think this type of profiling exists at this point in the
> validator, and I'm not sure if it would be useful for other cases. But
> is this something you could consider including in the markup  
> validator?
> I would be willing to contribute a patch to that effect if this is
> something you think could be added to the validator.

So, basically the need would be to:
- define a validator call parameter saying "identify yourself as"
- trigger sending a different UA string based on this parameter
?

BTW, there is a validator release due in a few days, if we're fast  
enough we may be able to add this in.

-- 
olivier

Received on Friday, 8 February 2008 00:00:42 UTC