RE: Server Side Magic.

At 05:43  22/06/01 -0400, Butler, Mark wrote:
>... As I see it there are two ways of making content available on
>multiple devices - content specialization and content generalization ...

Yes, that is a good way to put it. I was somewhat strident in advocating 
accessibility. Apologies if offence was caused to any readers as a result.

>... use alternate text, avoiding the use of frames, the use of stylesheets 
>and providing a document that degrades to a sensible serial form are all 
>useful techniques...

Frames and tables in HTML are more of a display format rather than a data 
abstraction. The table syntax has been enhanced with extra detail to 
indicate column headings. This introduced a sort of data model for the table.

Perhaps we need an slightly more abstract notation to represent the 
relationship between groups of information. This might be interpreted by 
browsers as a multiple frames on a large screen or as hypertext links on a 
small screen.

As a demonstration for INET2001 I created a mock-up of a large-screen 
document built from a hierarchy of small i-mode web pages 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/2001/inet/imslds.html>.

The same abstraction might be used for frames and tables. The temptation is 
to use a complex relational or object notation, as is done with WebML 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/2001/wd.html#webml>, but perhaps there are better 
ways to think about this?

>As Tom points out pages using these techniques are much more likely to be 
>usable on PDA style devices. The downside of this approach is lots of 
>people need to support devices that do not support HTML ...

An alternative approach is to use a gateway to transform the content, as 
allowed for in WAP 2. This might be implemented using Cocoon. The content 
would be translated for low end devices, such as smaller screen PDAs (such 
as  Palm Pilots) and larger screen phones using WAP 1. However, there may 
not be enough such legacy devices and the user experience may be so poor, 
to not be commercially viable.


Tom Worthington FACS tom.worthington@tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd ABN: 17 088 714 309
http://www.tomw.net.au PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617
Visiting Fellow, Computer Science, Australian National University
Publications Director & Past President, Australian Computer Society
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Australia's IT Landscape, 6 July Coolum: http://www.tomw.net.au/2001/eal

Received on Sunday, 24 June 2001 04:42:45 UTC