-----Original Message----- From: Nuno Lopes [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: sexta-feira, 13 de Dezembro de 2002 16:27 To: 'Tom Weiss' Cc: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' Subject: RE: [cms-list] CMS and mobile handsets
Hi Tom, I would like to suggest a different slant on the solution for your problem. >I've been working on a really tricky CMS problem recently: basically if >you run a large mobile portal you end up have to support a wide range of >mobile phones (100+) and not all pages will work on all phones. The problem of supporting different mobile phones is reduced to support different semi-compatible or fully incompatible <X> browsers. Within this realm I believe that this is the same as supporting multiple web browsers. It seams to me that one has three options. 1) If the intent is to support the largest number of mobile phones then the solution should fall on using the common standard functionalities embedded in them. We have been doing that for years. (Easy) 2) If the intent is to support the best user experience that can be provided by each mobile phone then the solution must be in the support of multiple templates and content types, each for each specific mobile phone. (Hard/MoreWork) 3) A Mix of both (Even harder/Templates will be less the wysiswyg). I can provide you with different solutions for each of these options. Unfortunately not within the realm of products, yet (my independence). But what I can provide maybe is what you need to select a product. These solutions would not of course fall under the scope of using multiple site maps. >Club Nokia on a Motorola phone, some it relates to downloading paid for >content that doesn't work on your phone (ringtones, java games), or may >even be dependant on multimedia features on the phone (i.e. colour). Well this again as been dealt by providing the reader with information regarding the targeted OS (Mobile Phone System, Operation System, etc). But if you want provide the user's only the links to software (files) that runs on his mobile phone then one needs a system that automatically detects the calling browser type and mobile device. Usually this can be found on the request object sent through the Mobile Gateway. This info can then used by the content components on the template to filter the software descriptors on the content-store by phone model. Some gateways provide that information, some don't. This is usually a problem not of the CMS. >Basicaly you end up with a massive range of different sitemaps - almost >one for each phone - whereas what you really want is a single sitemap >and rules to define what pages are shown to different groups of phones. As for this one have two options depending on the type of publishing mechanism supported by the CMS, Dynamic or Static Publishing. 1) Dynamic Publishing - The solution for your problem can be viewed as dynamically selecting the template (on page request) for the same content based on the Mobile Phone type. Within this scope the ideal CMS should have the ability to group templates over the same content and site map node and apply template selection rules that cope with this need. Even if the CMS does not provide this ability one can easily code a JSP, PHP or ASP page that select the appropriate template, nevertheless a hack. (easy) 2) Static Publishing - Within this one would need a system that can dynamically publish several file maps by browser over the same site map. The same technique for template selection as stated in 1 is needed, although the hack is harder if not impossible to implement without vendor intervention if the CMS does not provide an embedded feature. (harder). The problem of this approach is waste of disk space. 3) A mix of both (Even harder). Templates will be less the wysiswyg. In both situations the trick is in the ability of the CMS to provide multiple templates over the same 'node' in the site map, and template selection based on browser/phone model. There is one thing that I left out, multiple visual Content Types/Formats (device specific binary formats) for the same content unit. This is probably for another post because the management of these assets is less then simple as you know. There is one company that you might have a look at - www.outsystems.com. Hope this post helped you. Best regards, Nuno Lopes Independent Consultant. -- http://cms-list.org/ trim your replies for good karma.
