I've just gotten a Nextel phone that has a microbrowser built in. It seems to be pretty usable, inasmuch as anything with a 6x16 display can be. I'd like to be able to check a few basic perlmonks.org things over it, such as headlines, current writeups/XP, maybe what's in the chatterbox.

We have XML interfaces into all this stuff, so I'm thinking of writing either a minaturized HTML or WAP portal for Perlmonks. I'm looking for suggestions as to how this may best be presented, since my user interface skills are, well, lamer than hell.

Ideally, of course, it would be integrated into the site, but I don't really imagine that vroom has the time to do this. I'm imaging a page on my system at home, that would yank the XML, format as appropriate, WAPify if necessary/desired, and display.

Input from anyone with any experience in this sort of thing, or who just has some good ideas, would be greatly appreicated.

--Chris

e-mail jcwren
  • Comment on WAP/Microbrowser Interface to Perlmonks.org

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RE: WAP/Microbrowser Interface to Perlmonks.org
by vrempire (Sexton) on Oct 15, 2000 at 13:55 UTC
    <html><head><title></title></head> <body> Hi, one month before I also did something with WAP.I would like to share my experience when doing it.
    My project is to create a template in HTML that will generate the WML file.
    It is used for the news publishing.
    For the first time when I want to create the WML file, I used the WAPDrive WAPTOR that is the free editor from www.wapdrive.com.
    To test it, whether it work or not, I used the emulator from the www.gelon.net.
    In gelon.net, you can find various WAPphone emulators such as Nokia, Motorola,Ericsson,Siemens etc.
    The problem is that, there might be higher tendency that the same WML file that worked on Nokia phone might not work on other WAPphone.
    For, browser, we can test it on only two browsers that are IE a& Netscape.But, for WAPphone, it is much harder since there are many brands of WAphone.
    Sometimes, when I run the script in the WAPDrive WAPTOR and the emulator of gelon.net, the script has nothing wrong and run well,but when it is tested on the real WApphone, it is not working.
    So, to get the high accuracy of the code, my contact told me to use the Nokia WAP Development Toolkits.
    I used it, and the toolkits is very useful.It is very very sensitive to XML or WML errors.Only one small mistake, the file cannot be compiled and shown on the Nokia Emulator that comes along with the Toolkits.
    Anyway, the requirements of using the Toolkits is very high.It needs at least 32MB it.So, it took most of my time to compiled the file.What I do is to write the script in WAPDrive WAPTOR and compile it on NOKIA Toolkits.
    You also have to register first before downloading the Toolkits.And it is free.
    For PerlMonks , if there is the WAPsite of Perlmonks,I would like to see something like who is in the chatterbox,the experience,the new nodes etc.
    I think that's all for now. bye VREMPIRE
    Lord Of the Darkness </body> </html>
[reply]
RE: WAP/Microbrowser Interface to Perlmonks.org
by merlyn (Sage) on Oct 14, 2000 at 19:18 UTC
    It's so nice that the WAP people have abandoned WML, having selected XHTML as their new platform. We won't have to go to special effort to make a site "WAP-accessible" any more. Yeah!

    -- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

[reply]
RE: WAP/Microbrowser Interface to Perlmonks.org
by little (Curate) on Oct 15, 2000 at 16:56 UTC
    you might also look at
    1. m3gate to find an browser based interface to wap resources
    2. saxon which is a tool collection to process XML documents
    Have a nice day
    All decision is left to your taste
[reply]
RE: WAP/Microbrowser Interface to Perlmonks.org
by AgentM (Curate) on Oct 15, 2000 at 04:43 UTC
    May i suggest being able to view only one section at a time, perhaps with a main menu consisting of the elements you wish to be able to view. I'm not exactly sure why you would want to view Seekers of perl Wisdon, since it would difficult to write an answer (even on those nasty Communicators), so maybe you wanna check your home node, definitely the chatterbox, perhaps the perdocs or reviews (for quick book or module checks on the fly). Try to design it as a tree instead of putting extraneous links on the side, wasting space. And, needless to say, be sure to post what you come up with! great stuff!
    AgentM Systems or Nasca Enterprises is not responsible for the comments made by AgentM- anywhere.
[reply]
RE: WAP/Microbrowser Interface to Perlmonks.org
by mirod (Canon) on Oct 14, 2000 at 21:00 UTC

    Hey, I'd dabble in that. I don't have much WAP experience but I guess I could do some XML transformation stuff.

    I like those WAP thingies and the lack of bandwidth that forces you to pack useful content in your pages instead of !@#$%^&* animated GIF's

    UpdateHow do you test those things by the way, are there WAP browsers for desktops out there?

[reply]

      Nokia have a toolkit (windows only, despite the fact it's written in Java) which includes a simulated WAP 1.1 phone (Nokia 7110) as well as a prototype WAP 2.0 (XHTML) phone.

      I believe that phone.com also have some emulators available for download (based on their browser which phone manufacturers have licensed).

      The major problem I have with developing for WAP is getting the size of the page down in all cases.

      For the Nokia 7110 (which I have) the compiled size of the page must be less than 1400 bytes or so or the page just won't load - this is a real pain since all our pages are dynamic and it's difficult to ensure that the page won't spill - every page on the site has to automagically have 'next page' links added to it.

      Still, on the upside - the pages I have done do look good and are a pretty useful cut down version of our site, which converts to a 'mobile' form pretty well.

      Have fun,

      rdw

[reply]
(jcwren) RE: WAP/Microbrowser Interface to Perlmonks.org
by jcwren (Prior) on Oct 15, 2000 at 23:01 UTC
    If anyone would like to take a poke at it, you can use your WAP device to view the Perlmonks Other Users list and the weather at my house. The URL is wap.tinymicros.com.

    I haven't gotten to loading up all the emulators, so I can't vouch for it's tastiness to other than UP.Browsers, and specifically the Nextel i1000plus phone. If you do play with it, drop me an email and let me know if it worked for you.

    --Chris

    e-mail jcwren
[reply]
RE: WAP/Microbrowser Interface to Perlmonks.org
by ZZamboni (Curate) on Oct 16, 2000 at 01:00 UTC
    Interesting! I've been thinking about writing a PerlMonks PQA for the Palm VII, but haven't gotten around to it yet. I would love to see what you come up with - maybe we could share some ideas or code.

    In such a small screen, I think I'd be interested in being able to see certain sections of Newest Nodes, or maybe a certain number of nodes from the top of a specific section. Also, keep it to a certain number of comments (or no comments) unless the user asks for it.

    --ZZamboni

[reply]
RE: WAP/Microbrowser Interface to Perlmonks.org
by t0mas (Priest) on Oct 16, 2000 at 10:36 UTC
[reply]

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