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Perhaps the most important advice for mobile web application developers would be to test your applications early and often. The reality of the device landscape is such that even with the convergence of standards between the mobile web and wired web, there is plenty of room for differences in implementations. Web developers are often also accustomed to things that have become de facto standards, but have never really been incorporated into a specification.
Testing on the Openwave Phone Simulator The Openwave Phone Simulator has been shipping to developers since 1998. Each release of the Simulator contains a specific version of the browser, but from the same source code tree as the browser that finds its way onto real handsets. As a result, the Phone Simulator provides as faithful an emulation of the Openwave Mobile Browser as possible. It is important to note that when the Openwave Mobile Browser is ported to a specific device, the exact features may vary as will the font and key layout of the device. Openwave provides phone configuration files to be used with the Openwave Phone Simulator, which are image and key mapping files that allow the simulator to more closely mimic the look and feel of certain devices. However it is important to note that these files in now way change the core way the simulator operates. For testing XHTML applications, developers should use either version 6.1 or 6.2 of the Openwave Phone simulator (this is the one shown in the images throughout this document). For more details about choosing the appropriate version, please visit developer.openwave.com/resources/sdk.html. In addition to providing the client emulation, the Openwave Developer Network also operates server side infrastructure to allow real end to end application testing. The latest version of the Openwave Mobile Access Gateway is hosted and available for access free of charge by visiting developer.openwave.com/gateway/index.html. This is of particular (and even required) when testing applications using the WAP Plug-in for the Openwave Phone Simulator. The Mobile Access Gateway also currently supports connections from any device or emulator that operates on a WAP 1.x network stack, and will be upgraded to support WAP 2.x network stack based devices and emulators in the Summer of 2003. Testing on Other SDKs While this document has been focused on style suggestions for building XHTML-MP applications to work within the Openwave Mobile Browser, there are other browsers on the market, and it is worth validating the way that your application renders in these other environments as well. Emulators for Nokia devices can be found at forum.nokia.com, for Motorola browser devices at www.motocoder.com, and for Sony Ericsson devices at www.ericsson.com/mobilityworld. Each of the tools found at the sites above are again going to be emulations or simulations of how specific (or generic) devices may render XHTML content. While the tools may be useful to get a very high level impression of how applications will render on a specific vendor's technology, they should be used with caution as the accuracy of the emulation can not be guaranteed. Testing On Real Devices Perhaps the best advice for developers building XHTML-MP applications would be to test early and test often on REAL PHONES. Due to specific font support, display constrictions, idiosyncrasies of browser implementations, bugs, and other "features" markup may not render as you expect on any given device, and the specific layout is very likely to differ from device to device even when the browser vendor is consistent across the devices. This is of particular importance for applications that rely heavily on graphics or use a visual layout style using tables or other features. For some suggestions on you applications can be architected to handle these differences between devices, please see Appendix B: Multiserving To test on a real device, applications must be staged in a location that is openly available to the public internet. While it may appear that this places a burden on the developer to seek out external hosting early in the development process, the payoff can be significant as device specific issues can be identified and addressed early in the development process. XHTML-MP Style Guide Chapters XHTML-MP Style Guide Index 1. History of XHTML Mobile Profile 2. XHTML MP in practice 3. Menus in XHTML Mobile profile 1.0 4. Text-flow 5. Forms: Collecting User Data 6. Images and Objects 7. Testing Your Applications Appendix A Appendix B |