Wap Review - Covering the Mobile Web Since 2004

Found On the Mobile Web 254

Posted on May 2, 2012 by Dennis Bournique

Found on the Mobile Web is a regular WAP Review feature listing newly added and updated sites on the YesWAP.com mobile portal and WapReview mobile site directory. With these latest additions the directory and portal now list 2310 mobile sites.

News/International/Europe

BBC Beta m.bbc.co.uk/news The BBC's new site for mobile devices. Built with mobile first responsive design techniques, it's designed to adapt to a range of devices from feature phones with 240px wide screens and no JavaScript support up to seven inch tablets with 720x1280 px screens. If your are interested in the details, the BBC designers have shared their design goals and methodology and their testing methods in a couple of interesting blog posts. Via Stephanie Rieger
Ratings: Content Usability

Science & Tech

Scitable www.nature.com/scitable A free science library and personal learning tool from the publisher of Nature and Scientific American.

Scitable concentrates on genetics and cell biology, including evolution, gene expression, and the cellular processes shared by living organisms. Also offers resources for the young scientist, including advice about effective science communication and career paths.
Content: Usability:

Search/Local

SelfStorage m.selfstorage.com Online directory of over 5,000 US self storage facilities. Search by city, address or zip. Listings include maps, photos, prices, hours. Book a space online or click to call. Some facilities offer discount pricing for SelfStorage.com users.
Content: Usability:

Diaroogle Toilet Search www.diaroogle.com Crowd sourced directory of free public toilets in Manhattan, New York City. Search for a restroom by address, cross street, zip, neighborhood, landmark or park.

Listings include a Google, map, address, hours, walking directions from the establishment's front door to the loo for well hidden ones, ratings for privacy, cleanliness and accessibility, and in some cases a photo of the facilities.
Content: Usability:

Science & Tech/Tech News Sites and Blogs

Ogbongeblog m.ogbongeblog.com Jide Ogunsanya's tech blog has mobile phone reviews, PC and blogging tips, iPad tutorials and more. Mobile version created with Mobstac.
Content: Usability:

Sports/Soccer

Football Pool EC 2012 ek2012.voetbalpoule.mobi An online social game where you predict the outcome of Euro 2012 soccer football matches to compete for points against other users. Also soccer news and schedules.
Content: Usability:

News/International/Middle East

gulfnews m.gulfnews.com Mobile web edition of an English language daily print newspaper published in Dubai, UAE
Content: Usability:

Entertainment and Leisure/Games

Useful Chess m.usefulchess.com A mobile webapp that plays chess. Works in most browsers with JavaScript support, including Opera Mini. The site also has articles on chess openings and tactics and a chess glossary.
Content: Usability:

Science & Tech/Internet/Web Design & Development

laura frank www.doingandthinking.com Web designer Laura Frank's personal and tech blog covering design, tooling for web designers and her other interests including film. The site's lightweight responsive desigh works well in most mobile browsers
Content: Usability:

Search/Local/Restaurants

Snapfinger www.snapfinger.com/mobile A geolocation enabled webapp that detects your location and lists nearby restaurants (US only) that offer delivery or takeout. You can view menus and place your order online.
Content: Usability:

Posted in Found on the Mobile Web | Tagged Chess, FOMW, local search, News Sites, Science, Soccer, Tech News, Web Design | Leave a comment

Seeking Alpha Website Is Broken in Opera and Firefox Mobile

Posted on April 26, 2012 by Dennis Bournique

Seeking Alpha is a big US based stock market analysis and financial site. I recently discovered that it has a mobile formatted layout which it seems to only serve to Android and iOS devices. In Safari, the Android default browser and Android Chrome, the mobile layout is attractive and seems user friendly, although scrolling in both Android browsers feels a bit laggy.

On other mobile platforms like bada, Symbian, S40 and WebOS, Seeking Alpha delivers its desktop layout, which is a bit sluggish and unwieldy, but usable on mobile devices.

But woe to anyone who tries to use the Seeking Alpha site with ~~Firefox Mobile~~, Opera Mobile or Opera Mini on Android. The mobile formatted version loads in these browsers. It even looks OK with all the page elements laid out in their proper places. But most of the links don't work and pages can't be scrolled. In other words the page is completely and totally broken! And there's no way to switch to the desktop view either. I didn't try the site in Opera Mini on an iPhone but suspect it breaks the same way there.

The site's designers apparently know or suspect (because they probably didn't bother to test in any other browsers) that their mobile view doesn't work with anything but iOS Safari and the Android browser so they don't serve it to other mobile platforms. But their browser detection algorithm detects platforms rather than browsers and they end up serving markup intended for the Android browser to Opera and Firefox just because they are running on the Android platform. This is confirmed by the fact that the Opera browsers on Symbian get the desktop version.

The way Seeking Alpha breaks only on non-Google browsers on Android is weird, but one of the perils of building and testing to a specific browser or browsers rather than using a standards based approach and testing with multiple browsers and platforms.

This tendency for web designers to only test against iOS and Android, the so called "Webkit Monoculture", is putting other browser vendors and their users in a real bind. It's pushing Opera and Mozilla toward giving their browsers -webkit- CSS prefix support, and in the case of Mozilla, changing user agent strings to impersonate Safari. Many in the web design community design community whom I respect think this will do more harm than good. As a user I'm don't know who's right, I just want sites to work no matter which platform and browser I'm using.

Update 3-May-2012: The Seeking Alpha site now works properly in Firefox Mobile but is still broken in Opera Mobile and Opera Mini.

Posted in Mobile Web Development | Tagged Firefox Mobile, iPhone Monoculture, Opera Mobile, Webkit Monoculture | Leave a comment

Thematic (In)Consistency Hall of Shame No. 5 - Google+

Posted on April 23, 2012 by Dennis Bournique

Thematic Consistency is the principle that a web link should serve essentially the same information to all browsers. Adapting content to better fit the target platform is good but redirecting requests for a specific image or news item to your site's homepage spoils the user's experience and discourages them from using or linking to your site or web service.

Sites that break thematic consistency get a place of honor in the WapReview Thematic (In)consistency Hall of Shame. The latest honoree is Google Plus! That surprised me as Google is one of the few big companies that seems to understand the web on mobile devices. It's all the more surprising that the problem occurs with Plus, a product that Google is lavishing a lot of effort on currently. I'm sure this is a bug rather than intentional and I hope that Google fixes promptly.

Google+'s thematic inconsistency problem occurs when someone shares a link to an individual Google+ item on Twitter or in a blog post. For example, here's the permalink to a Google+ post by MobileBurn's Michael Oryl https://plus.google.com/113528147156289620389/posts/3e13HVX1kLB

If you follow that link in a desktop browser or the Android or iOS browser everything will work as it should and you will end up on a page showing Michael's post (first image, above).

But with most other mobile browsers including Opera Mobile, Opera Mini, UC Browser or the bada, WebOS, Symbian Belle or Nokia S40 Proxy Browsers, Google will redirect your request for Michael's post to your Google+ home page showing your own Google+ stream (second image, above) rather than the linked post!. That means the permalink is broken!

Until Google fixes this bug, do your friends a favor and don't share links to Google+ posts by email or on Facebook or Twitter.

This bug only occurs if you are signed into your Google account. Sign out of Google and Google+ permalinks open the correct page. They do go to the desktop version of the page rather than the mobile formatted one which is probably another bug, but not a serious one as most modern mobile browsers handle Google+ single item pages well.

Posted in Mobile Web Development | Tagged Google, Thematic (In)consistency Hall of Shame, thematic consistency | 1 Comment

Latest UC Browser 8.2 (Java) Modified to Remove the Virtual Keypad On Samsung, LG and Other Touchcreen Phones

Posted on April 20, 2012 by Dennis Bournique

I did a post a while ago explaining how to modify Opera Mini's jad file to hide the unneeded touch keypad that displays at the bottom of the screen on some touchscreen phones. The post included a link to the modified Opera Mini. I received a request asking for a copy of the latest signed Java version of UC Browser modified to hide the keypad.

The process for modifying the UC Browser or any other Java app is exactly the same as what was described in the original post:

1.Download the app's jad file to a PC. You can get UC Browser jad files (signed or unsigned ) at www.ucweb.com/English/UCbrowser/platform.html?platform=java

2. Open the downloaded mini.jad with a text editor or Windows Wordpad

3. Scroll to the bottom of the file and paste in the following lines:

MIDlet-Touch-Support: True
UseNativeTextButtons: hide
ReverseSoftkeys: hide
UseNativeCommands: hide
Navi-Key-Hidden: true
Nokia-MIDlet-On-Screen-Keypad: no

4. Upload the file to Dropbox.com or another file sharing service that is easy to use in your phone browser. Click here to get a free 2GB Dropbox account (by using this referral link I get an extra 250 MB of storage in my Dropbox which I thank you for).

5. Visit Dropbox with your phone browser and click the modified mini.jad link to download it to your phone.

I've posted the modified UC Browser 8.0 jad at:
dl.dropbox.com/u/4637247/UCBrowser_V8.0.3.107_Java_pf70(Build11112416).jad
Short link: is.gd/uc8touch. To install it, go to is.gd/uc8touch with your phone browser.

Update: 21-Mar-2012 UC Browser 8.2 Alpha has been released. It features many enhancements and bug fixes see my review for details. This is the latest patch release that adds swipe navigation and fixes a bug that made entering URLs on bada phones impossible:

dl.dropbox.com/u/4637247/UCBrowser_V8.2.0.132_Java_pf70_(Build12032111).jad
Short link: is.gd/uc82touch. To install it, go to is.gd/uc82touch with your phone browser.

Update: 20-Apr-2012 The Production (non-Beta) version of UC Browser 8.2.1 has been released. New features include a built in RSS reader and bookmark backup and restore. See my review for more details.

dl.dropbox.com/u/4637247/UCBrowser_V8.2.1.144_Java_pf70_(Build12041210).jad
Short link: db.tt/ajY88aHm. To install it, go to db.tt/ajY88aHm with your phone browser.