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Although WML is a standard as specified by the WAP Forum there is a considerable amount of room for interpretation in the presentation layer. Differences in browser presentation may make designing an application to a single browser perform poorly on other browsers. To check whether you are delivering a highly usable application to your customers, you must test it on the browsers and devices, or simulators of those, used by your customer base. To achieve the highest usability for your customers, you may find you need to branch your code depending on the browser calling it. In this article, we will discuss how to manage select lists in two widely-available WAP browsers.
Menu implementation The 'select' element is interpreted differently by different browsers. The implementation on the Openwave Mobile Browser&##153; renders it as a list of links, and it can be used to get numbers, icons and items for a menu. The Nokia and Ericsson browsers render the 'select' list as a drop down list and only display the currently selected or default option on the card. This requires the user to select the option element and display a new presentation of all the options. When the user picks one (or more) of the options, these are then displayed back on the originating card. Choosing a value from a 'select element' on the Mobile Browser is a two step process. Scroll to select the element and click on the 'show' softkey to navigate on. This is illustrated below:  Fig. 1: The 2 step process of choosing from a select list with the Mobile Browser Choosing from 'Select' List on a Nokia BrowserHowever choosing from a 'select' element on a Nokia browser is a four step process. This is illustrated below:  Fig. 2: Using the select element and displaying the select list  Fig. 3: Making the selection and displaying the result The extra steps required for making a selection using the Nokia and Ericsson implementation clearly result in extra user "clicks" and therefore a less useable application. Handling the 'Title' AttributeIt is also worth noting how the Nokia browser and the Mobile Browser handle the 'title' attribute of the 'select' element. This attribute specifies a brief label for the 'select' list and should therefore be meaningful. The Mobile Browser will use this label as a title when displaying the 'select' content. Whereas the Nokia browser will use it as a label for a user interface mechanism that lets the user navigate to the 'select' content as seen below:  Fig 4: Select title and list not visible (left) and displayed (right) Proposed Solution for Two Main BrowsersIn order have a really usable app on all devices you should branch your code depending on the browser type that is calling. This branching of code allows you to optimise you application for each browser type and take advantage of the differing implementations of WML rather than have them be problematic. For example when displaying a menu list on the Mobile Browser you should take advantage of its implementation of the 'select' element. This select element implementation presents a user friendly list all on one screen with numbers which act as accelerator shortcut keys, allowing the user to select an option by pressing the corresponding number on the keypad rather than scrolling to it. The developer also has the option to enhance his application by including the Openwave local source images. However to display the same list on the Nokia/ Ericsson browsers the developer should use regular anchored links. This will omit the extra steps involved in the selection of an option.  Fig. 5: Menu list on Nokia using anchored lists (left) and menu list on the Mobile Browser using select element (right). |