diakonos has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hello Monks!

There has been a discussion in our workplace of the new age of PDA's and Wed-Enabled Cell Phones. Obviously there is a change on web design to accomodate the small screens for web browsing. I have searched within Super Search on using perl to program for this technology and have made no progress in finding answers to my question. I have also searched CPAN for modules that may already be available to help accomodate programers in developing for these environemnts. (Maybe I did not know the keywords to do the searches with)

So, here are my questions:

  • Does anyone know of a site or reference to programming for PDA browsers?
  • Is anyone currently using Perl to do this with?
  • If so, are there any CPAN modules available (so I don't have to re-invent the wheel)?
  • Looking for any general comments for this subject.

    Thanks to all for any help in the directing this kinda lost monk
    Diakonos

    • Replies are listed 'Best First'.
    Re: New Age of Web Viewing
    by SuperCruncher (Pilgrim) on Nov 15, 2002 at 22:50 UTC
      What is a "PDA browser" exactly? That's the problem. Some PDAs used slimmed-down HTML with a few hacks. Some try their best at "ordinary" HTML. Some use WAP and its associated markup language WML. So my point is you need to select a PDA and then decide how you can code for it. But even then you need to be careful. WML, for instance, is full of vendor-specific hacks and "improvements". So you really do need to test to make sure it works on whatever equipment your salesforce or whatever will be using. I don't know of any general sites as such, but Nokia have a great developers site.

      Is anyone using Perl to do this? I would think they are! About CPAN modules: well, I'm pretty sure there would be some for WML. But as it's a dialect of XML anyway, XML::Writer could be useful.

      Interestingly, you've hit upon a problem and an area I'm researching. What's going to happen when a new device is invented for web access? More work to make a site available through it. I'm working on a system that I'm calling a "dynamic life and information management system" to resolve these sorts of problems.

      You should also consider storing your data using structural markup of some kind, and then merely altering its presentation for other devices. XML and XSLT are just one approach. A DB and some print statements are another :-)

    		[reply]
        Thanks for the great information ++
    		[reply]
    Re: New Age of Web Viewing
    by valdez (Monsignor) on Nov 15, 2002 at 22:43 UTC

      If you need to create content for those phones, you should before investigate what kind of language they understand. For example, if you are talking about WAP cell phones, then you should probably search for WML on CPAN (search also with GOOGLE and in your local bookshop). All the rest works as usual: some dedicated web app that produces the content...

      Ciao, Valerio

    		[reply]
    Re: New Age of Web Viewing
    by DigitalKitty (Parson) on Nov 16, 2002 at 16:40 UTC
      Hi diakonos,

      I just remembered an old issue of 'The Perl Journal' I had contained an article on writing wireless applications with perl. The issue was #20 ( Vol. 5. No. 4 page 28-39 ).

      The modules discussed / used were:

      • HTML::Mason
      • Apache::WAP::AutoIndex
      • Apache::WAP::MailPeek
      • Mail::Cclient


      The article explains ( quite well ) how to configure an apache web server to handle wireless markup language ( WML ) pages on a WAP enabled cellular phone. I'm relatively sure a PDA wouldn't be that different.

      You can read the entire aticle at: http://www.sysadminmag.com/tpj/issues/vol5_4/

      Hope this helps,

      -Katie.
    		[reply]
    Re: New Age of Web Viewing
    by pg (Canon) on Nov 15, 2002 at 21:47 UTC
      Let’s make the question a little bit clearer, there are two different aspects here:
      1) Doing development job for wireless web browsing by using Perl, but the development will be conducted on a platform such like Windows, UNIX, etc. We are looking at the development environment.
      2) Whether there is a micro-edition Perl run time environment, which runs on something, such like a mobile phone etc.
    		[reply]
        Here is what I have. Running Apache web server and I want to write pages for salesman and customers to access information on their PDA's and web enabled cellphones. Sorry I did not make myself too clear here.

        We are trying to find two things:

      • What is the criteria for web based cellphone and PDA web browsing and
      • Are there current modules (CPAN) or other that may aid in the delevopment of the sites

        Thanks again,

    		[reply]
          If you are not restricted to use Perl, I would say micro-edition Java is a more nature choice.
    		[reply]

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