Other Useful Tools
for Adaptation
Adapting
a site for different devices goes beyond markup generation.
Commercial tools such as Changing Worlds, Dynetic, and Volantis do a
good comprehensive job in adaptation. Let us look at some more
interesting open-source tools in this area.
Dynamically
Resizing Images
If
we can generate markup code dynamically, we might as well resize
images dynamically! Maybe we can detect the screen size using WURFL
and write logic that will resize a large image to fit the device
screen. This will increase the load on the server a little bit as we
resize the image, but we can save the image to disk for later usage
and manage the additional load. This will cut down on the chore of
resizing images for different resolutions every time we add one.
There
are a few ready libraries that work with WURFL and can resize images
and even change their format.
GAIA
Image Transcoder (http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/utilities/gaia.php) is
one such tool in Java. It even lets you define regions of interest to
help in preview and place on the image.
PHP
Image Rendering Library
(http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/utilities/phpimagerendering.php) is
another implementation in PHP.
Image
Server (http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/utilities/imageserver.php) can
work as a filter for your Java server, optimizing images without a
trace of what's happening to the user!
Quick and Easy Way
to Make Your Blog Mobile
If
the job at hand is to make a mobile web version of a blog, you can do
it in a matter of minutes! FeedBurner (http://www.feedburner.com) and
Feed2Mobile (http://feed2mobile.kaywa.com/) take the RSS feed from
your blog and show it in a mobile-friendly manner. Users just point
to the new URL and they can access your mobile blog!
If
you want full control, and want to set up something on your blog
itself, head for Mobile Web Toolkit (http://www.beeweb.com). MWT's
WordPress plug-in can get your blog mobile within 10 minutes. MWT
allows you to customize what widgets show up to users of different
browsers in a friendly AJAX editor. Plug-ins for other content
management systems are on their way. MWT is a very interesting
concept and advocates delivering a rich experience to mobile users,
rather than restricting them with some lowest common denominator
design.
On
the other hand, many content management systems have now started
supporting versions adapted to mobile devices. By the time this book
goes to print, all major CMS will have mobile web support.
MyMobileWeb: Going
the Semantic Way
MyMobileWeb
(http://forge.morfeo-project.org/) is a Java-based open-source tool
to build .mobi-compliant websites. It is a comprehensive framework
that uses declarative XML to build the presentation layer (very
similar to WALL) and an MVC architecture for handling various events.
MyMobileWeb
is an ambitious project. The team is working on semantic mobile web,
context awareness and mobile AJAX. Some of the features that may
interest you:
It
does not do markup transcoding at run time, but generates
device-specific pages at publish time. This gives better
performance.
The
visual controls are defined through a declarative language and can
interoperate with JSTL for dynamism. They are also rendered based on
the context or rules that we can specify.
The
framework comes with ready visual controls for layouts, date
control, RSS etc. It can even do binding of visual controls with
data, and can generate a grid to display data and paginate.
You
get control over the visual aspects—CSS, alternatine content,
hiding pages based on device, etc.
It
has a validation framework that can work on both client side and
server side depending on scripting support at the client.
Comes
with an Eclipse plug-in!
HAWHAW: As Simple
as a Laugh?
HAWHAW
(http://www.hawhaw.de/) has a funny acronym, but is a great idea. It
stands for HTML And WML Hybrid Adapted Webserver. HAWHAW is an
open-source script written in PHP. You can create HAWHAW pages via
PHP or XML. But the interesting thing about it is that it can even
generate VoiceXML output. So not only can you build your standard and
mobile website with it, you can even have people call in a number and
do a complete interactive voice response system.
You
can even get some ideas from the HAWHAW implementation and build
something of your own.
Summary
In
this quick chapter, we learned when to adapt and how to adapt our
mobile site to different devices. Specifically:
We
learned about the Lowest Common Denominator method, finding and
comparing features of different mobile devices and deciding to adapt
or not.
We
extended the Pizza On The Run application to adaptively display
content using Wireless Abstraction Library.
We
saw how adaptation works in different browsers.
We
learned about WURFL and how it can be used to adapt based on browser
capabilities.
We
reviewed tools that can aid in adaptation—Tera WURFL,
MyMobileWeb, Mobile Web Toolkit, Image Server, GAIA Image
Transcoder, and HAWHAW.
One
note of caution! Do not over-constrain the content. Users expect the
same kind of experience on the mobile that they have on the Web. As
mobile web developers, we must strive to bridge the gap, not widen
it.
In
the next chapter, we will review the best practices of mobile web
development: the standards and the opinions!
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