/* Background */
More and more phones on non-Japanese networks are able to display
html-variant pages.
Lots of English language Japanese based sites sniff and serve, (send
different content depending on the phone type and capabilities) using
databases of phone display capabilities like Mika's PHP imode class, Bill
Pellowe's J-Phone list, or other more or less proprietory phone capability
databases in other languages.
Such databases do not generally include the capabilities of non-Japanese
phones, which have generally until now used one or other variation on
onanist's markup language...
In other words, English language sites in Japan that may be of more
general interest (city guides sites, for example) will soon soon be
getting hits from phones that they know nothing about. The "default page"
served in such circumstances is often the most basic and assumes the most
rudimentary capabilities.
user agents are starting to become available. For example, a kind list
member in Ireland informs me that the MS Mobile Explorer (html browser) is
now shipping in a number of Sony and Benefon phones and contains the
string MMEF
e.g Sony J6 user agent reads 'Mozilla/1.22 (compatible; MMEF20;
Cellphone; CMD-Z5;Pj020e)'
It also crashed a site I run, which is silly arse coding on my part, but
makes the point, to me at least. I would like to establish the
capabilities of these phones so that I can serve appropriate content.
/* Question */
I would like to start getting on top of this problem, preferably in a
coordinated way. Are other list members interested in being involved in
creating some kind database of phone capabilities that takes into account
the new western phone (German/Dutch imode being just the start) that they
are prepared to release under the GPL or LGPL. I don't want to
accidentally step on any toes (toes are for stamping on hard or treating
with respect) and would frankly far prefer that others do the work and I
reap the benefits, if that could be arranged.... However, needs must, I
would pull my finger out.
Any solution MUST be Open Source. otherwise it is of no interest to me.
Nick
Fukuoka, Japan
Received on Sat Feb 23 15:31:59 2002