AJAX initiative for mobile web

Read this news in Techmeme about leading vendors and companies taking part in a workshop aimed at bringing AJAX for the mobile web applications.

This further strengthens my argument from my previous post that mobile web is picking up. I think AJAX something that was definitely missing on the mobile platform. When most of the web applications are making use of AJAX to bring interactiveness and better usability, the mobile web has been lagging behind.

[Article moved from http://mohasinz.blogspot.com/2007/09/ajax-initiative-for-mobile-web.html]

Review: Opera Mini 4 Beta 2

Opera Mini 4 beta 2 is a mobile browser for mobile phones which are java enabled. It is one of the (probably the one and only) best mobile browser around which provides superior browsing experience.

What makes it superior is the fact that it gives a true browsing experience, in the sense, it is capable of rendering actual web pages as you would see it on a desktop web browser like IE, Firefox or Opera.

An other factor that makes it really superior is its performance. Pages are fetched and rendered very fast and definitely it is the fastest mobile browser around. The magic behind this performance is due to the fact that the requested web pages are first processed and optimized by Opera's proxy servers and then given to the mobile phone. Size of the images in these optimized web pages is greatly reduced though the only minor drawback is that their resolution is very less. But thats a small sacrifice for the responsiveness that is gained in turn.

About Opera Mini

I would like to only touch of upon some of the notable features. For a complete list of features, Opera Mini's web site is the best place to refer (its a great page explaining all the features crisp and clear).

Henceforth, in this post, when I say "Opera Mini" I am referring to Opera Mini 4 beta 2

Start Page:

Opera Mini's startup page is a really smart move towards usability. At first, I was not happy with this because the default browser that comes along with the Nokia phones (based on S60,3rd edition platform) which takes you to a default home page that you have set. But after having used Opera Mini for quite some time, I found that it was a good thing to have a start page. What makes start page so useful is the fact that all you bookmarks and your recent browsing history is accessible from here. Well thought usability!!

Start Page

Menu

Web page Preview:

Any page fetched by default is shown in a fit-to-screen preview. A small box overlay hovers over the preview which can be moved in any direction either using the keypad or using your phones joystick. This box overlay gives an indication of the content that would be zoomed onto fit the phone's screen. A cute little mouse pointer is also provided which proves to be useful at times when selecting items in that web page.

When scrolling through a web page (in zoomed mode), Opera aligns/positions the page automatically such that the text appears centrally. So that way we do not have a scroll left/right to adjust the text such that it falls within the viewable region. Very intelligent!!

Full page preview

Zoomed portion of the preview

Shortcut Keys:

There are shortcuts for doing almost any operation. There are two sets of shortcuts: the first set is accessed by pressing "#" key followed by other characters. This gives the most common operations like managing your bookmarks or navigating between pages. The second set of shortcuts can be accessed by pressing "*" key followed by other character. These shortcuts are used to access bookmarked web sites and to change the viewing mode to full screen or toggling between portrait and landscape mode. Check the screenshots below the complete list of shortcuts.

Shortcuts accessed by pressing #

Shortcuts accessed by pressing *

Bookmarks:

Websites can be easily bookmarked by using the shortcut "#7". You can also bookmark a website by chossing Add Bookmark option from Menu->Tools.

While adding a bookmark, you can also choose to display this bookmark on the start page. not adding all bookmarks to the start page ensures that the start page is not cluttered and only the most important bookmarks are availabled for access on the start page.

Adding bookmark from the Menu

Choose to display this book mark in the start page

You can manage the add/delete/modify/rearrange the bookmarks by pressing the shortcut key "#2" and then selecting the Manage option. You can also access the bookmark list from the menu.

Managing bookmarks

One of the biggest drawbacks of Opera Mini has to do with the reordering of the bookmark list. Say, for example, you need to move a particular bookmark from the bottom of the list to the top, then you would have to click Manage->Move Up every single time until the item reaches to the top. Especially if your list is huge, any new bookmark appears at the bottom of the list and it becomes a pain to move this new bookmark to the top of the list.

Viewing in Landscape and Portrait modes:

This is one feature which not just cool but also very useful. Most of the phones these days have bigger screen which are tall but not wide. (there are exceptions, for example, my Nokia E61 has a wider screen which gives you landscape view). For these kind of phones this is useful feature where you can rotate the screen to make it into a landscape mode thus giving you more reading space on the screen. I highly appreciate this feature because very few phones have this inbuilt capability to rotate the screen from portrait to landscape mode (Nokia E60 has this feature inbuilt). "*#" will toggle between landscape and portrait mode.

Screen in landscape mode.

Screen in portrait mode

Apart from these viewing modes, in each of these modes you can choose to have these pages displayed in Full screen mode. "**" will toggle between full screen mode and normal mode.

In Normal Mode

In Full screen mode

Search Engines:

There is inbuilt support for some of the popular search engines to which you can issue a query. Since Opera has tied up with Yahoo, they seem to have not included Google and MSN search. I was not sure how to add a new search engine, say Google, all by myself. Though I added Google to the list of search engines, but when I issued a query, Opera says the page could not be found.

Multiple Search Engines

Settings:

From the settings screen, you can choose to disable images from being loaded. Disabling images would make you pages load even more faster. You can also choose an option to make you web page fit to the screen's width.

Settings Screen

You can also choose your default viewing mode: Landscape/Portrait and Full Screen.

Settings Screen (contd.)

Verdict:

Pros: Great browser with great usability and performance. Support for Portrait/Landscape mode of viewing. Easy shortcuts for doing almost anything.

Cons: It is a pain to reorder your bookmarks. Cannot search within a page. Not sure how to added other search engines. Some (very few) web pages are rendered blank.

But on a whole, this is the best mobile browser around. Guaranteed.. you will be hooked to it for a very long time.

Below are some of the screenshots of other web pages that were browsed using Opera Mini.

Twitter - Mobile Version

Google Reader - Mobile version

Mini Techmeme - Mobile version of techmeme

Page Information for the web page being displayed

Mobile web is not all that bad

There was this post from Scott Karp on why Mobile Web sucks for him. I could hardly agree with what he had to say and I really wanted to post this message as a reply to that. I guess lot of others would also disagree the fact that Mobile web is bad and Russel Beattie's post expresses his opposition to the fact that Mobile web browsing sucks (well.. Ahmm.. good post Russ.. except that my ears are bleeding with so many f*** :))

I think mobile surfing (and mobile computing in general) is really picking up recently. As Russ has pointed out, lot of popular web services have started providing an alternate web link which serves mobile-optimized web pages which start with http://m.theirdomainname.com/ (well not necessarily all follow the same format. For example, Techmeme's mobile site has this URL http://www.techmeme.com/mini ). But for web sites who don't provide mobile versions of their web pages there are going to lose out on a huge number of users who browse from mobile devices. As I had mentioned earlier, the are vastly underestimating the need for a mobile optimized web site.

I know lot of us have trouble finding web services which are optimized for mobile browsing. I had the same frustration trying to figure out such mobile web pages. That's the reason why I am maintaining a list of web sites which are optimized for mobile browsing. I have been updating this list as and when I find newer web sites.

Coming to Scott's complain that mobile browsing is slow, I agree with that, but its not really that bad. There are ways to circumvent this. Just like Russ, I too use Opera Mini beta for browsing on my Nokia E61. One thing that Opera does intelligently is that it does not download the web pages to the phone as it it. The web pages are first fetched into the Opera proxy severs and then they are optimized and reduced in size (to a factor of 70-90% approximately) and then pushed on to your phone. So the browsing experience (fetching and rendering them on the phone) is very fast.

Mobile Computing is the future and the whole world is slowly moving towards it. I know there are problems with mobile computing but I am sure these are being addresses as you read this.

[Article moved from http://mohasinz.blogspot.com/2007/09/mobile-web-is-not-all-that-bad.html]

Free Screen Capturing on Symbian Phones

Are you a reviewer like myself who wants to take screenshots of your symbian phone. Whatever might be the reason for screen capturing, many of us find it difficult to locate a free tool for doing the same.

Eventually we would end up finding this nice free tool called Screenshot for Symbian OS which was developed by Antony Pranata.

This mobile application is a freeware and its source code is also available for you to modify under GPL.

Screenshot for Symbian OS is available for Symbian OS S60 (1st, 2nd and 3rd editions) and UIQ 2.x platforms.

Features of Screenshot for Symbian OS:
- Capturing Mode: Lets you capture one shot (default) or shots every 1, 2, 5 and 10 seconds.
- Shortcut: Lets you choose from 5 predefined pair of keys which need to pressed for taking a screenshot. Default is + key combination.
- Image Format: You choose to save the image as JPEG or PNG of different qualities.
- Location: You can either choose to store the capture screen images either in the phone memory or external storage card.
- File name: Choose the prefix text that is used to form the name of the captured image file.
- Directory: Choose a directory name under which the screen capture image files are stored.
- Delay of first shot: You can choose to give a delay before taking the first shot. Default is "No delay".

When you launch the application, it has a back button for hiding the application in the background. The application shows the last captured screenshot on its home screen. You can choose to send this to a different phone or your PC based on the connection capabilities of the phone. You can also choose the deactivate screen capture if you choose to such that screen capture does not work if you press the keys combination.

Ironically, this tool does not let you take a screenshot of the settings screen of this application.

On a whole, this application does a great job of capturing the screenshots on your phone.

Home screen

Folder showing the captured images.

Settings screen captured on a Nokia E61

Tips: Format any web page for viewing on mobile phone

There are a lot of websites which are not optimized for viewing them on mobile phones.

These web sites/pages can be reformatted for viewing them on your mobile phone.

Go to Google Mobile Search web page and click on settings. In the settings screen, choose the "Yes" for the option which says "Format web pages for your phone".

After having done this, in Google Mobile Search (http://mobile.google.com/search) give the URL(web address) as the search string.

If the URL (of the web page which you need to be reformatted) is valid (i.e. if the webpage exists) then it should appear as the first search result.

Now, opening the URL from the first search result will open up the reformatted web page. Great isn't it!!

The way it is done is that Google automatically reformats the web page for viewing on mobile phone. Thanks to Google!!

Mobile Phone optimized web pages

One of the biggest problems which a person faces while surfing the internet from their mobile phone is to find a web page that has been optimized for mobile phone screens. Having personally realized this pain, I've with a round up of web services which are optimized for use on Mobile Phones.

I know there are lot of other web sites which are optimized for mobile phones. So, I would be updating the below list periodically.

Also, please feel free to let me know if you've come across other websites which I am missing in the list below.

Web Mail:
Yahoo!
Mail - http://m.yahoo.com/mail
Gmail - http://mobile.google.com/gmail

General News:
Google News - http://mobile.google.com/m/news
The New York
Times - http://mobile.nytimes.com/
BusinessWeek - http://businessweek.mobi/index.jsp
Reuters News - http://mobile.reuters.com/mobile/m/Home

Technology News:
Mini-Techmeme - http://www.techmeme.com/mini
Technorati - http://m.technorati.com/
Zdnet
news - http://m.zdnet.com/

Social Networking & Blogging:
Facebook - http://m.facebook.com/home.php
WordPress.com
Blog - http://m.wordpress.com/
Twitter - http://m.twitter.com/home
Jaiku - http://m.jaiku.com/

Search & Other Indexing:
Google mobile search - http://mobile.google.com/search
Wapedia - Mobile
Encyclopedia - http://wapedia.mobi/en/
Technorati - http://m.technorati.com (Famous Blog Indexing service)

RSS Reader:
Google Reader - http://www.google.com/reader/m/view/
Newsgator - http://m.newsgator.com/


Chat Client:
Y! Messenger - http://mm.yahoo.com/?Referer=yahoo&card=d&Referer=internal

Photos & Videos:
Picasa Web - http://picasaweb.google.com/m?source=mobileproducts&pli=1
YouTube
Mobile - http://m.youtube.com/

Others:
Google Mobile services - http://mobile.google.com/
MSN Mobile - http://mobile.msn.com/device/en-us/default.aspx

About Mobile Computing Trends

Mobile Computing Trends is a blog run by Mohasin where he covers topics on mobile computing.

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