Nokia's Web
I looking deeply into how Nokia phone handle the web. Hence I am spending a lot of time on Nokia’s Forum site and the much better syndication page.
Firstly it is incredibly annoying how Nokia seems to layout their information. They mis-use an incredible amount of whitespace on their website and their PDFs. Most documents are in some corporate branded PDF, piss poor typography (Word most likely), some ugly font which makes on screen reading, a nightmare.
The forum site is just scary. I just hate all those tasteless pictures of models hanging around smiling and using their mobile phone. Give me a break. I am a developer.
Now to download a PDF, you need to go through, 1 2 3 4 5 different dialogues. Rate this file (er, I have not downloaded it), Thank you for rating this file, Thank you for downloading this file, CLICK AT LAST on the actual file.
Then get something like this:
Due to international export control regulations, you are not authorized to download this file. You can contact nokia.forum.team@nokia.com to get more information.
Or please come back later.
Argh, there is an incredible of shit to wade through here. To think I used to think W3 was difficult to navigate, and Sourceforge for being so troublesome to download a file.
Ok, I am focusing on browsing implementations. Bear with me. You have all these different Series phones, with different browsers and device characteristics, and to add insult to injury these phones won’t be able to upgrade to newer versions very easily. I was just looking at the series 90 docs:
Which seem to be amazingly similar, OK… I have figured this out. Designing XHTML content the 11/03, replaces web services 10/03.
I started getting quite excited about all the conformance to Web Standards it touts. Look carefully and you will find it using an old Opera 6 as it’s engine. Look even more carefully to find a terrifying list of exceptions. It’s not that bad, but it is dis-heartening to see it is designed for HTML 3.2. At least one generation before XHTML. It says but I am not certain, that it does not support things like abbreviation, which I like to use very much. Also no support for accesskeys. But it’s all very difficult to read what it does or does not support as the information is not laid out in an easy to read comparitive matrix or something.
So, how else can I figure out if a page is going to render properly on a Series 90 phone? Try get Opera 6 and try it. Oh no, you can’t download Opera 6. And does it have small screen view like Opera 7??
I am just dis-heartned. There are disparities everywhere. For example, if Opera does support CSS, why doesn’t CSS definitions render in small screen view in Opera7?
Trying to figure out how the web will look on the mobile is looking like quite a feat. It’s near impossible to get any decent statistics about how many phones, and of what type are out there and what about the browsing user agent?! For a Web developer who tore his hair out over poor standards compliance with Netscape and IE, stay out of Mobile Web stuff right now!