I messed around a little with WML back in 2002.

There were several problems back then - not least the unpredictable
capabilities (especially storage capacities) of the available WAP
clients and the sheer cost of browsing at mobile phone rates.

My phone accepts RS-MMC cards - 1GB now costs GBP16. Most phones
currently shipping have cameras or MP3 players and consequently huge
storage capacities. Many contract phones include free minutes and GPRS
is threatening to become affordable.

So I'm revisiting the idea. Google is gently ramming Mobile Sitemaps
down my throat at every opportunity and I must admit there are more WML
than HTML-capable platforms out there. It's just that absolutely no
one uses them.

I'm putting a trial site up. Does anyone have any recent experience of
the relevance of SEO to mobile sites? The obvious stuff doesn't work -
there are no meta tags, no description, and you simply cannot include
vast amounts of text. Do search engines index WML pages at the deck or
card level?

Capacity of current browser platforms? I'm doing most of my testing on
a Siemens S65 - but my experience four years ago was that browser
capabilty was both extremely critical and extremely variable. I've got
some HUGE files to load into its browser, but it can be very slow (tens
of seconds) to do quite simple things like a BACK request. Odd
behaviour - instant display of the start of the target page but a
delayed return to the original jumping-off point.

It strikes me as odd. There's no public evidence that anyone is doing
anything at all with WAP - yet there is a limited opportunity already
and 3G technologies _could_ lead to an explosion.

I'm aware of http://www.webmasterworld.com/pda_mobile_computing/ but it
lacks SEO perspectives.

Phil Payne wrote:

> I messed around a little with WML back in 2002.
>
> There were several problems back then - not least the unpredictable
> capabilities (especially storage capacities) of the available WAP
> clients and the sheer cost of browsing at mobile phone rates.
>
> My phone accepts RS-MMC cards - 1GB now costs GBP16. Most phones
> currently shipping have cameras or MP3 players and consequently huge
> storage capacities. Many contract phones include free minutes and GPRS
> is threatening to become affordable.
>
> So I'm revisiting the idea. Google is gently ramming Mobile Sitemaps
> down my throat at every opportunity and I must admit there are more WML
> than HTML-capable platforms out there. It's just that absolutely no
> one uses them.
>
> I'm putting a trial site up. Does anyone have any recent experience of
> the relevance of SEO to mobile sites? The obvious stuff doesn't work -
> there are no meta tags, no description, and you simply cannot include
> vast amounts of text. Do search engines index WML pages at the deck or
> card level?
>
> Capacity of current browser platforms? I'm doing most of my testing on
> a Siemens S65 - but my experience four years ago was that browser
> capabilty was both extremely critical and extremely variable. I've got
> some HUGE files to load into its browser, but it can be very slow (tens
> of seconds) to do quite simple things like a BACK request. Odd
> behaviour - instant display of the start of the target page but a
> delayed return to the original jumping-off point.
>
> It strikes me as odd. There's no public evidence that anyone is doing
> anything at all with WAP - yet there is a limited opportunity already
> and 3G technologies _could_ lead to an explosion.
>
> I'm aware of http://www.webmasterworld.com/pda_mobile_computing/ but it
> lacks SEO perspectives.

The reason nobody is working with WAP is that it's a dead, out-moded
format IMO.

Mobile Flash is where everything is at this year (Flash Lite). WML is a
horrific, expensive to process system, where as FL is self enclosed.
Pretty much all smartphones are shipped with FL now. FL is identical
across all platforms, so no worrying about the rendering capabilities
of the users device.

And if not FL, full XHTML. Both my cellphones have full XHTML browsers
built in (they're also both 3G video phones).

I think WML has just been superseded; mobile devices are pretty much
able to do everything a regular desktop can do now, just with a much
smaller format screen.

Phil Payne wrote:
> I messed around a little with WML back in 2002.
>
> There were several problems back then - not least the unpredictable
> capabilities (especially storage capacities) of the available WAP
> clients and the sheer cost of browsing at mobile phone rates.
>
> My phone accepts RS-MMC cards - 1GB now costs GBP16. Most phones
> currently shipping have cameras or MP3 players and consequently huge
> storage capacities. Many contract phones include free minutes and GPRS
> is threatening to become affordable.
>
> So I'm revisiting the idea. Google is gently ramming Mobile Sitemaps
> down my throat at every opportunity and I must admit there are more WML
> than HTML-capable platforms out there. It's just that absolutely no
> one uses them.
>
> I'm putting a trial site up. Does anyone have any recent experience of
> the relevance of SEO to mobile sites? The obvious stuff doesn't work -
> there are no meta tags, no description, and you simply cannot include
> vast amounts of text. Do search engines index WML pages at the deck or
> card level?
>
> Capacity of current browser platforms? I'm doing most of my testing on
> a Siemens S65 - but my experience four years ago was that browser
> capabilty was both extremely critical and extremely variable. I've got
> some HUGE files to load into its browser, but it can be very slow (tens
> of seconds) to do quite simple things like a BACK request. Odd
> behaviour - instant display of the start of the target page but a
> delayed return to the original jumping-off point.
>
> It strikes me as odd. There's no public evidence that anyone is doing
> anything at all with WAP - yet there is a limited opportunity already
> and 3G technologies _could_ lead to an explosion.
>
> I'm aware of http://www.webmasterworld.com/pda_mobile_computing/ but it
> lacks SEO perspectives.

wap?
switch your thoughts to xhtml and flash lite
http://www.adobe.com/mobile/

Not very helpful, sorry....
I have a modest Motorola L6
with an html/xhtml/wap-ish browser
and there is no question that
(at least for now)
I prefer the results from the Google search for the whole web
to the Google search for mobile sites,
so I look mostly at html/xhtml pages.

Phil Payne wrote:

> I messed around a little with WML back in 2002.
>
> There were several problems back then - not least the unpredictable
> capabilities (especially storage capacities) of the available WAP
> clients and the sheer cost of browsing at mobile phone rates.
>
> My phone accepts RS-MMC cards - 1GB now costs GBP16. Most phones
> currently shipping have cameras or MP3 players and consequently huge
> storage capacities. Many contract phones include free minutes and GPRS
> is threatening to become affordable.
>
> So I'm revisiting the idea. Google is gently ramming Mobile Sitemaps
> down my throat at every opportunity and I must admit there are more WML
> than HTML-capable platforms out there. It's just that absolutely no
> one uses them.
>
> I'm putting a trial site up. Does anyone have any recent experience of
> the relevance of SEO to mobile sites? The obvious stuff doesn't work -
> there are no meta tags, no description, and you simply cannot include
> vast amounts of text. Do search engines index WML pages at the deck or
> card level?
>
> Capacity of current browser platforms? I'm doing most of my testing on
> a Siemens S65 - but my experience four years ago was that browser
> capabilty was both extremely critical and extremely variable. I've got
> some HUGE files to load into its browser, but it can be very slow (tens
> of seconds) to do quite simple things like a BACK request. Odd
> behaviour - instant display of the start of the target page but a
> delayed return to the original jumping-off point.
>
> It strikes me as odd. There's no public evidence that anyone is doing
> anything at all with WAP - yet there is a limited opportunity already
> and 3G technologies _could_ lead to an explosion.
>
> I'm aware of http://www.webmasterworld.com/pda_mobile_computing/ but it
> lacks SEO perspectives.

Phil Payne wrote:

> It strikes me as odd. There's no public evidence that anyone is doing
> anything at all with WAP - yet there is a limited opportunity already
> and 3G technologies _could_ lead to an explosion.

As SpaceGirl says, this is because WAP is dead. Although it was a fad with
developers, it never really caught on with consumers. Chiefly a chicken
and egg thing: most sites did not convert to WAP, so most consumers did
not want to use it as there was not much content about; consequently,
most sites did not convert to WAP, because most consumers never used it,
even if their phone had the capacity for it.

Nowadays, most phones can cope with XHTML, and a growing number can even
cope with tag soup HTML. Even phones that do use WAP normally have an
HTML->WAP gateway at the service provider's end.

General advice:

* Look at XHTML Basic, a cut-down version of XHTML 1.0 Strict.
Some phones behave more predictably with XHTML than with HTML.

* Many phone screens are 208x208 pixels and often even smaller.
Test your design at very low resolutions. Opera's small screen
rendering mode is pretty good for this.

* Avoid tables, non-iconic images and anything else likely to
push your site's width out too far to the right.

* Keep pages small to reduce memory size and loading time. Pare
back your navigation; remove images that aren't strictly
necessary.

* Register a very short domain name. Typing on those keypads can
be a pain.

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
Contact Me ~ http://tobyinkster.co.uk/contact

> > It strikes me as odd. There's no public evidence that anyone is doing
> > anything at all with WAP - yet there is a limited opportunity already
> > and 3G technologies _could_ lead to an explosion.
>
> As SpaceGirl says, this is because WAP is dead.

Well, I have to agree with her. No trace that anything evern happened
at all.

> Nowadays, most phones can cope with XHTML, and a growing number can even
> cope with tag soup HTML. Even phones that do use WAP normally have an
> HTML->WAP gateway at the service provider's end.

The Siemens came with a CD support package. I "inherited" it from my
daughter - she's young enough to regard phones as fashion items. I
loaded up the software, it spotted the Internet link and asked to
upgrade itself. Then when I attached the phone, it asked if I wanted
the phone's code upgraded. A new browser was included, and it seems to
support XHTML pretty well. So I think that's the direction.

I ran through a selection of current phone specs and they also seem to
have XHTML - in fact one or two don't seem to have WAP as such.

> General advice:

> * Look at XHTML Basic, a cut-down version of XHTML 1.0 Strict.
> Some phones behave more predictably with XHTML than with HTML.
>
> * Many phone screens are 208x208 pixels and often even smaller.
> Test your design at very low resolutions. Opera's small screen
> rendering mode is pretty good for this.
>
> * Avoid tables, non-iconic images and anything else likely to
> push your site's width out too far to the right.
>
> * Keep pages small to reduce memory size and loading time. Pare
> back your navigation; remove images that aren't strictly
> necessary.
>
> * Register a very short domain name. Typing on those keypads can
> be a pain.

Surely tables (the content variety) aren't too bad for bandwidth? Not
that they always make sense on a small screen.

Phil Payne wrote:
>> * Avoid tables, non-iconic images and anything else likely to
>> push your site's width out too far to the right.
>
> Surely tables (the content variety) aren't too bad for bandwidth? Not
> that they always make sense on a small screen.

The problem isn't bandwidth, but width of the element itself. Pretty much
anything can fold, so it'll fit on a small screen. Tables don't really do
that for obvious reasons.
--
Rik Wasmus

Phil Payne wrote:

> Surely tables (the content variety) aren't too bad for bandwidth?

I didn't say *bandwidth* -- I said *width*.

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
Contact Me ~ http://tobyinkster.co.uk/contact

On Jan 23, 9:06 pm, Toby Inkster wrote:
> Phil Payne wrote:
> > Surely tables (the content variety) aren't too bad for bandwidth?I didn't say *bandwidth* -- I said *width*.

On my phone there is a visible memory size limit for
downloading xhtml/html pages,
so why not instead of filling that with html code for
table layout have something useful?

On Jan 24, 3:07 am, "cristina" <crist...@asymptoticdesign.com> wrote:
> On Jan 23, 9:06 pm, Toby Inkster wrote:
>
> > Phil Payne wrote:
> > > Surely tables (the content variety) aren't too bad for bandwidth?I didn't say *bandwidth* -- I said *width*.On my phone there is a visible memory size limit for
> downloading xhtml/html pages,
> so why not instead of filling that with html code for
> table layout have something useful?

Something useful?

I'm trying to find a not-too-complex way to make pages such as
http://www.isham-research.co.uk/quattro/torque.html available to people
working on cars in remote locations where there are few resources.

http://www.isham-research.co.uk/quattro/terminals.html is another
example

I've discovered that the S65 I'm using as a testbed supports CSS
media:handheld