Microsoft Developer News

Dev Toolbar
There's an update to Microsoft's IE Developer Toolbar, handy tool for analysis your webpages in IE.

• Explore and modify the document object model (DOM) of a Web page.
• Locate and select specific elements on a Web page through a variety of techniques.
• Selectively disable Internet Explorer settings.
• View HTML object class names, ID's, and details such as link paths, tab index values, and access keys.
• Outline tables, table cells, images, or selected tags.
• Validate HTML, CSS, WAI, and RSS web feed links.
• Display image dimensions, file sizes, path information, and alternate (ALT) text.
• Immediately resize the browser window to a new resolution.
• Selectively clear the browser cache and saved cookies. Choose from all objects or those associated with a given domain.
• Display a fully featured design ruler to help accurately align and measure objects on your pages.
• Find the style rules used to set specific style values on an element.
• View the formatted and syntax colored source of HTML and CSS.

Download Developer Toolbar

MEDC 2007 Europe
MEDC 2007 Europe will be a concentrated TWO-DAY DEEP DIVE of technical training dedicated to mobile and embedded technologies. This annual event is tailored for developers, IT professionals, and business professionals who are looking to innovate and scale their mobile or embedded development investments, applications, and solutions.

25 - 26 June 2007, Berlin: Microsoft Mobile & Embedded DevCon (MEDC) 2007 (££).

Ubuntu Mobile

The Ubuntu Developer Summit in Seville discussed the first release of a mobile edition of Ubunto ,to work on the new low power Intel platform. The edition will be in October with Ubuntu 7.10

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6634195.stm
http://www.ubuntu.com/

Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'Humanity to others', or 'I am what I am because of who we all are'. The Ubuntu distribution brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the software world.

Device Emulator v2.0

Microsoft have released a new version of their Device Emulator for development on portable devices using Windows Mobile. This version supports Vista and the new Device Centre functionality.



What others are saying about this new version:
Anand Balachandran Blogs about Device Development
Jason Langridge's WebLog - MR Mobile!
Akhune's WebLog

Google Maps - My Maps

There's been an interesting enhancement to Google Maps. They've added the ability to build your own map and also share maps with others and with Google Earth users
http://maps.google.com/help/maps/userguide/index.html

Blogger Mobile

For US Bloggers there's a new Mobile Service from Google's Blogger.

Without needing any computer, a user can simple send pictures to blogger with a caption and they will be posted on a brand new blog. People with existing blogs can have their pictures delivered there instead. Potential uses could include amateur journalism, holiday reporting or just sharing your views of the world.

http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=42448

For us in the UK we will have to wait till this is supported and in the meantime those with txt to email gateways can use the Mail to Blogger functionality to post text based blogs. Blogger also had an audio blog function but this has been discontinued, Gabcast and Hibcast are commercial services that replace that functionality.

Windows Mobile 6

Stuart J. Johnston talks about Windows Mobile 6, the .Net Compact Framework and how this is helping Microsoft boost their status in the mobile market place and how they can compete against rival platforms such as the blackberry.

http://reddevnews.com/news/devnews/article.aspx?editorialsid=187

Web 2.0 on Mobiles

Spencer Kelly from the BBC's Click show discusses how Web 2.0 is being brought to Mobiles for example Vodafone will be allowing customers to access their MySpace pages and upload videos to YouTube.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/6389469.stm

Vodafone has already been providing users with picture sharing via their Vodafone live! studio product and video from Sky.

Link Rel=Alternative Media=Handheld

A tip, I gleaned via the Google Webmaster help pages.

You may request that a redirect for the user to an alternate page for handheld media.
In the section of HTML add a link

<link rel="alternate" media="handheld" href="alternate_page.htm" />

The alternate page can then be adjusted for use on mobiles.

A similar link can be done to have an alternative stylesheet for mobile pages.

More details on the Link element at That Standards Guy

This technique can also be used to help make your pages more accessible to your users.

Bendy is Trendy

Motorola's new Z8 phone has many features such as HSDPA, Sky Mobile access, a Micro SD Slot and the capability of playing video on it's 16 million colour screen at 30 frames per second.

So is everyone talking about all that?
No, they are not. The one feature that everyone is talking about is that this phone bends as it slides open.

http://crave.cnet.co.uk/mobiles/0,39029453,49287677,00.htm

Winder in Helsinki

Award winning journalistm, Davey Winder has been visiting F-Secure in Helsinki to learn about all kinds of Malware including mobile phone viruses and trojans. Read more about this in the Jan 2007 edition of PCPro, available on your news stands now.

Pick a database - Any Database

Information week reports:

"Thirty percent of wireless developers rely on SQL Server as the central, server-based database from which a wireless application receives data, according to Evans Data."

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=196604412

MySQL came in second place with 20% and Oracle 3rd with 16%. Usually for Web Development the open source favourite comes top of the list, back in October it was reported that 45% of web developers use MySQL.

So why would Microsoft beat MySQL for wireless developers?

The answer to this becomes more obvious if you think about who is producing these different services. At the moment the bulk of web development is done by small companies or individuals working for clients who also have smaller budgets and also smaller numbers of customers/end users.

Mobile applications are being typically written by larger corporations with lots of customers. This means that they need more reliable and powerful database systems.

I think this is just a perception issue rather than MySQL not being good enough, particularly with a recent report of MySQL now being capable of running on the latest 64bit platforms.

A simple Motorola Phone

Well there would be little point in looking for this phone in your web logs. Motorola's latest creation has 8 hours of talk time and a massive 12 days of standby time but no internet access. It manages this feat with some clever technology and by removing all of the gadgets that are becoming common on phones. It's truly a mobile phone not a mobile TV station/science lab/recording studio.

Its unlikely to be available in the UK, as Motorola is aiming this phone at the growing Indian mobile telephone market
http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=17663&ch=nanotech&sc=

Ringing The Changes - The Then, Now And Wow! Of Seamless Mobility

An IET London Lecture

IET London, The 2006 Mountbatten Memorial Lecture
Date: 1st November 2006
"Ringing The Changes - The Then, Now And Wow! Of Seamless Mobility"
Lecture by Sir David Brown, Chairman of Motorola

Both Institution members and non-members are invited
Venue: The IET, Savoy Place, London, WC2R 0BL

IET London Branch will be hosting an informal networking event with cash bar immediately following the lecture, in the Kelvin Bar.

In the 2006 Mountbatten Lecture, Sir David Brown, Chairman of Motorola Ltd and a former President of the IEE, will tell the story of mobile communications from the beginning of the 20th century to the future choices made possible by the unprecedented degrees of seamlessness of communications that are in prospect.He will discuss the implications of seamless mobility for engineers, and focus on some of the disruptive technologies likely to change the mobilecommunications landscape. He will illustrate the seamlessly mobile future from a range of userperspectives, and will dwell on the potential socioeconomic benefits. Both Institution members and non-members are invited to join us. Please indicate your attendance on the registration form.

Lecture: The 2006 Mountbatten Memorial Lecture
Date & Time: 1st November 2006,
Networking and refreshments 17:30 - 18:30.
Lecture 18:30 - 20:00
Cost: Free
Venue: The IET, Savoy Place, London, WC2R 0BL

Registration: see http://www.theiet.org/events/mountbatten/

Tools for Mobile Development - Emulators

Unless you have a free phone then to develop a mobile site its best to develop things from the desktop.

One useful tool is an emulator this allows you to confirm that your pages conform to standard and also view what they look like on a small screen.

There is a simple emulator online from the .mobi people.
http://emulator.mtld.mobi/emulator.php

I am also trying out the OpenWave simulator and the nokia simulator.
http://developer.openwave.com/dvl/
http://forum.nokia.com/ (requires registration)

When a mobile phone accesses an internet site it is doing this via a gateway. The gateway is provided by your mobile operator or ISP and converts the WAP commands from the phone into HTTP commands for the web server. The simulator may also need a WAP gateway (also called WAP Proxy)


In the Openwave software this is built in, for the Nokia emulator you will also need to install proxy software.

PHP-Nuke and HawHaw

I wanted to quickly mobile enable a site based on PHP Nuke so I created the following index.wml file:

  require_once("mainfile.php");
  require("hawhaw.inc.php");
  $myPage = new HAW_deck("PSTOIC - The Alumi Association of the Student Television of Imperial College");

  $myTitle = new HAW_text("Latest news from PSTOIC", HAW_TEXTFORMAT_BOLD);
  $myTitle->set_br(1);
  $myPage->add_text($myTitle);

  //Example from news/index.php
  $result = $db->sql_query("SELECT sid, catid, aid, title, time, hometext, bodytext, comments, counter, topic, informant, notes, acomm, score, ratings FROM ".$prefix."_stories $qdb $querylang ORDER BY sid DESC limit 5");
  while ($row = $db->sql_fetchrow($result)) {

  $title = filter($row['title'], "nohtml");
  $time = $row['time'];
  $mobitext = substr(filter($row['hometext'], "nohtml"),0,50);
  $myText1 = new HAW_text("* " . $title . " - " . $mobitext );
  $myText1->set_br(1);
  $myPage->add_text($myText1);

 }

  $myText1 = new HAW_text("---");
  $myText1->set_br(1);
  $myPage->add_text($myText1);
  $myPage->create_page();

Using HawHaw as a redirect

HawHaw is a toolkit to create universal mobile applications using PHP libraries. It's very good at simplifying the creation of mobile pages for multiple platforms and allows you to preview those pages via your desktop browser which can simplifies testing. For details see www.hawhaw.de

However if you are providing your sites from the same server and want to havesignificantly different sites for your mobile vs. wired users then you don'twant to be limited by the HawHaw emulator for the desktop clients. The following simple approach allows a switch between pages to be made dependanton the client's capabilities. It does not rely on BrowseCap.ini or GetBrowserfunction to work. Thanks to Norbert Huffschmid for explaining what I was doing wrong with my experiments.

1) Create a page for HTML (in my case it was simply the old Index.html) and rename it to index2.html. You can't use index.htm as that would be used first.

2) Create a page for mobiles clients, either manually or via HawHaw. In this case it's called index.wml.php

3) Create a page index.wml as below. This will be the page that all clients will be routed through. It will do a simple detection of the facilities of your browser and switch to the appropriate pages. (see separate article for setting up the index page correctly)

require_once("hawhaw.inc.php");
$myPage = new HAW_deck("Test desk");
if $myPage->ml == HAW_HTML & & $myPage->pureHTML)
{
header("Location: /index2.html");
die;
}
else
{
include "index.wml.php";
}
?>

Nokia6100 and the Unknown file type

It would appear that the earlier Nokia versions, i.e. my 6100 are not so clever when it comes to detecting what the Web server is sending it. If you give it a .php file then even if Apache is telling you it's of type "text/vnd.wap.wml" then it will error with a cryptic "Unknown file type" message. You need to send .wml files for the phone to be happy.

The work around for this issue is not too complex:

In the .htaccess file you need to add a few lines. The first adds an extra option for the index file.

DirectoryIndex index.wml index.php index.html index.htm

Then we add some code to tell apache to use php to process the index.wml


AddType text/vnd.wap.wml .wml
AddHandler application/x-httpd-php .wml


Finally in the .wml file we put the relavent php code to generate the .wml code for the WAP clients.