QuirksBlog - Mobile
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Part of Browsers.
As everybody who’s even slightly interested in mobile knows, the creation of the Apple App Store has caused a perfect flurry of activity among everybody else having to do with the mobile web.
Currently I’m making a list of all existing app stores. I’ve found a few, but I’m reasonably certain that I missed a few, too. So I’d like to ask you if you know of an app store I’ve forgotten. I’m especially looking for information on T-Mobile and HTC.
Meanwhile I was pointed to this PDF from Distimo with a nice overview of all app stores.
App stores of major mobile players
Other app stores
- AndAppStore (Android)
- GetJar (Java)
- Homebrew Apps (Palm webOS only, I think)
- MediaTek, a Taiwanese wireless semiconductor manufacturer: Vogins App Store aimed at China. (I sure hope
“Vogins” means something profound in Chinese)
- Mobile Rated (Java)
(Updated on 13 September)
Last week I’ve done the DOM Core tests in new
browsers: IE8 final (in both IE8 and IE7 mode), Firefox 3.5b4, Safari 4.0, Chrome 1 and 2, and Opera 10a.
I found no surprises.
After that I decided to continue with mobile browsers, of which I have 15 lying around on
my desk. Unfortunately I could not test IE Mobile
(old) because it supports only inline event handlers, Skyfire because it does not allow you
to remove alerts, and the Opera runtime in the Vodafone widget manager for terrifyingly complicated
reasons I still have to describe properly.
Still I managed to test the other twelve and found a few surprises.
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As I said before, I’m currently working for Vodafone on mobile browser compatibility and W3C Widgets. I’ve discussed some mobile browser problems, and you can look over my shoulder while I’m at work dissecting their odd behaviours. If you want the latest scoops on my mobile adventures, you can follow me on Twitter.
The time has come to talk about the W3C Widgets part of my job. Exactly what is a widget, how do you create one, why would you want to, and which systems support them?
Personally I firmly believe that widgets are the future of the mobile web. They are easy to create, they’re based on open standards, they save the end user quite a bit of network traffic, and many people around the world already know how to create them.
In contrast to other recent publications about widgets, I’ll tell you the whole story — or rather, a condensed version thereof.
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Since my previous post about mobile browser testing I’ve had four days in Düsseldorf to play with mobile phones, and I’ve once again unearthed quite a few problems that mobile browser testers will encounter. So this post is mostly about how the situation is even more complicated than we thought.
You can look over my shoulder while I’m testing, as far as I’m concerned, as long as you remember that every bit of data is provisional and may change radically without warning.
If you’re interested in real-time raw test results, follow me on Twitter. I regularly post my findings there, and it’s already delivered me some excellent feedback.
In this entry we’ll look at first-line and second-line browsers, mobile support for basic CSS, Opera’s two modes, the failure of @media handheld, Vodafone “content adaptation,” the Nokia keyCode problem, and we’ll close off with a few fun browser facts.
The crucial question of the moment is: who asserts supreme control over the way a website looks on a mobile phone? Currently I’m arguing the author should, but Opera and Vodafone assert vendor control, with Opera also giving the user a modicum of control.
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About a month ago the software department
of Vodafone Internet Services, based in Düsseldorf, Germany, asked for my help in creating
mobile widgets according to the W3C
Widgets specification. In particular, they’d noticed there are differences between
browsers even on mobile phones (imagine my surprise), and decided they needed advice from
a specialist (that would be me).
Better still, it quickly turned out that they were willing to pay me for doing
serious mobile browser compatibility tests and publishing them on this site.
The payment thingy is quite unusual, I can tell you (though not entirely unique).
This is easily the best job offer I’ve gotten in my entire freelance career, so I hurried to
accept it. Meanwhile I’ve done mobile tests for five days; enough to offer some
guidance for setting up a doctrine for mobile browser testing.
As far as I’m concerned you can look over my
shoulder while I’m working, but please PLEASE remember that everything I say
may change radically without notice after I’ve tested the same browsers on other devices.
Right now I’ve only done a few tests of functionality that’s basic to the
mobile experience, and even these basic tests will likely have to be expanded.
Besides, right now getting a general feeling for mobile testing and its manifold problems
is more important than running lots and lots of tests.
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Yesterday I walked into the local phone store because the “Temporarily Unavailable” sign had been removed from their “Get your iPhone here” poster. To my utter surprise they had six (6!) entire iPhones for sale, and no, there was no waiting list. I walked back home with a shiny new gadget, impatient to start testing it.
Meanwhile I’ve done some tests; now it’s time for a report.
Before we continue, let’s get the bad CSS news out of the way: Safari on the iPhone does not support position: fixed. Certain Other Browsers were ridiculed for this lack; Safari won’t be.
I’ve updated the CSS Table, the Core Table and the Events Table. In this entry I’m going to talk about JavaScript events on the iPhone. They’re — interesting.
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