PDA website design preview

Discussion in 'HTML & Website Design' started by ResaleBroker, Apr 1, 2006.

  1. #1
    Is there a tool, besides a PDA, that shows you what your website will look like on a PDA?
     
    ResaleBroker, Apr 1, 2006 IP
  2. ranoo

    ranoo Guest

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    #2
    i search too this kind of tool

    please let me know if you have found it.
    thanks in advance
     
    ranoo, Apr 1, 2006 IP
  3. kk5st

    kk5st Prominent Member

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    #3
    PDAs and phones have a wide variety of rendering engines. It is best to view your page(s) directly in the machine in question.

    Opera has a small screen rendering engine that simulates/is-the-same-as their cell version of Opera. [shift][f11]

    In Firefox's developer's extension, miscellaneous=>small screen rendering.

    Use these tools with and without images enabled for best results.

    You can also convert your html to wml/wap with a tool like html2wml. Being a PERL script, it should be trivial to convert on the fly for those UAs that accept .wml. Here is this 2 column layout demo rewritten as .wml
    
    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
    <!DOCTYPE wml PUBLIC "-//WAPFORUM//DTD WML 1.2//EN" "http://www.wapforum.org/DTD/wml12.dtd">
    <wml> <card title="2 Column - Apparent Equal Height"><p><big><strong>2 Column—Apparent Equal Height</strong></big></p> <p><big>Menu</big></p> <p><a href="#">menu item</a></p> <p><a href="#">menu item</a></p> <p><a href="#">menu item</a></p> <p><a href="#">menu item</a></p> <p>The background image in #wrapper extends the full length of
     the page. So, it looks like the column is full length.</p> <p><big>Main Content</big></p> <p>The borders are set to overlap. If you know
     which column will always be the longer, you may use only
     that column's border. If you use color to separate the
     columns, the background image in #wrapper should be total
     width of the float column. Like the overlapping borders,
     this makes it appear that both columns are full length.</p> <p>This demo has been modified to include an actual background
     image. I have also lengthened the content to more clearly show
     that the navcol <em>seems</em>  to extend the full height of the
     content.</p> <p>Aliquam odio wisi, molestie quis, hendrerit
     non, tempus ut, felis. Sed a augue. Fusce metus justo, faucibus
     in, sagittis dignissim, porttitor id, risus. Praesent sit amet
     velit. Aliquam erat volutpat. Pellentesque ut diam. Nam
     venenatis, metus sed scelerisque semper, tellus libero placerat
     tellus, vel aliquam risus lorem sed dui. Cras lacus. Nullam
     venenatis adipiscing neque. Maecenas et metus nec libero
     vehicula congue. Vestibulum vestibulum odio ullamcorper lacus.
     Etiam odio eros, aliquet et, volutpat eu, porta laoreet, orci.
     Donec sodales massa tincidunt est.</p>
    
    <p align="right"><do type="prev" label="[<<]"><prev/></do><do type="accept" label="[>>]"><go href="#wdf001"/></do></p>
    </card>
    <card title="2 Column - Apparent Equal Height" id="wdf001">
    <p>Footer Stuff ©2005</p> <p><a href="./">Return to index</a></p> <p><a href="#wrapper">Return to top of page</a></p>
    <p align="right"><do type="prev" label="[<<]"><prev/></do></p></card> </wml>
    Code (markup):
    cheers,

    gary
     
    kk5st, Apr 1, 2006 IP
  4. Colbyt

    Colbyt Notable Member

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    #4

    None that I know of. I have seen the question asked many times. The closest I have managed to come is to put your entire page into a table that matches the screen resolution you are shooting for.

    Keep in mind that all scripts have to be disabled. The little critters can't handle them. I started working on this and got distracted. If you vist my site using a PDA you will automaticlly go to this page but you should view in in a browser to get some concept of the space you have to work with.

    As I recall at this time the page above was one screen full on an AXIM. Scrolling with the pen is a major PITA so you almost need to go with long tall pages to be user friendly IMO.

    The redirection to the pda directory is accomplished with a JS.
     
    Colbyt, Apr 2, 2006 IP
  5. vectorgraphx

    vectorgraphx Guest

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    #5
    I've found wapsilon to do a reasonably adequate job.

    http://wapsilon.com/

    like i said... reasonably adequate. not good, but not completely screwed up either - i did get pages to display, but in the real world they definitely look different from phone to phone so this is marginal at best.

    But it's a start.

    VG
     
    vectorgraphx, Apr 3, 2006 IP
  6. brian394

    brian394 Well-Known Member

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    #6
    brian394, Apr 9, 2006 IP
  7. kk5st

    kk5st Prominent Member

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    #7
    Opera supports the .wml MIME type.

    cheers,

    gary
     
    kk5st, Apr 9, 2006 IP