Are We THERE Yet?
04.14.04. I have been unsuccessful to date implementing RealOne Mobile streaming. I am about to try some HTML+TIME.
04.21.04. To my utter disappointment, my mobile experiment using Microsoft's HTML+TIME timing markup language
was a bust. Oddly enough, I grabbed some source code from an example I found on the web, and even got as
far as integrating the timing code into my mobile CSS page and able to run successfully in a web browser.
This timing markup language is particularly interesting to me because it runs independently of a media
player. It doesn't look any different than a media clip embedded in the web page, but it eliminates the
need for the viewer to have a media player like RealOne or Windows Media Player loaded on their computer just
to be able to play the media file.
04.25.04. I wonder if declaring the mime-type in Pocket IE 2003 is the only thing
preventing the sequence to fire in the mobile browser...Anybody out there know for certain?
ANYBODY? NOBODY?.
05.05.04. I am still looking for answers about the potential mime-type issue with the mobile browser.
It seems that Microsoft has not yet adapted their own proprietary XHTML+SMIL technology to their own mobile web
browser, Pocket Internet Explorer (PIE), which, as you might expect, runs in Microsoft's own mobile
operating system, WinCE! Go figure! Argh...
05.16.04. Made cosmetic changes to the web site layout and reworked the header image in the mobile version
so the header text would show up better. Also played around with text sizes for both versions to get a
better balance of text sizes.
05.17.04. Updated some of the copy and moved it around to more relevant locations. Also, located a
mobile screen capture app to capture the mobile page views for posting on the full-size web site
for those who don't have access to a handheld device to view the Pocket PC version of the site.
5.25.04. Prepared all the images for both the desktop and handheld version of the site. Hopefully
all will go well...
5.26.04. Scaled the screen captures on the examples page to size for the handheld styles only.
By adding display:hidden; to all the image tags for the standard styles and to the image tag in the
handheld styles, PIE hid the proper images from each of the desktop version and handheld version.
Encountered the IE 5.0 Box Model bug, where if the width and height of the div box are defined, IE
adds 50% of the height value to the margin! Argh. I'll have to dig out my browser hacks file and
perform a bit of hiding "voodoo" on PIE, which is actually the problematic IE 5.0 browser.
5.27.04. I also had a hard time working with the scaled images using the IMG tag. I had to load them
as a background image in an empty but absolutely defined div. That's where the box model bug in IE
came from, but I will have to resolve the problem.
05.29.04. Purchased and downloaded the NetFront 3.1 mobile browser for Pocket PC, which was suppose
to have CSS2 support and got the shock of my life when I accessed my site on my iPAQ. NetFront
completely mangled all my efforts to produce a 'write-once. Use everywhere' solution using an
imported stylesheet for 'media="handheld". It even ignored all my nice little scaled images
that I made strictly for the Pocket PC version.
05.31.04. Gathered my notes and references and continued with the writing of content material for
the site. DOING the experiment is much more fun than writing about it afterwards. My posts to the
WebmasterWorld.com mobile forum while the work was in progress was spontaneous. I was full of excitement
or ready to rant, so the words flowed. Such is not the case now as the project comes to a close.
6.1.04. Fiddled with the interface again for more tolerable results on NetFront. While the desktop model
of the interface is much improved, the NetFront version is no less tolerable than before.
6.02.04. Important things left to do: 1)Compile the browser tools review information with links
for reference. 2)Resurrect the cgi mail form from my Acrobat project last school quarter, and customize
it for web response rather than Acrobat. 3) FIX THE #@%$^&! IE 5.0 BOX MODEL BUG! Final project review
is next Tuesday. Project will be submitted complete on Thursday. Then it's head for Columbus, Ohio for
a family reunion for a week before beginning Summer Quarter, and another Capstone project class to
tackle the media stream again, only this time without either Microsoft or RealNetwork players. Hopefully,
a reengineering of the project using SMIL, SVG and XHTML together will give me the results I'm after. If
all else fails, I found a little shareware player called PocketSMIL which supports all three protocols.
I'm pretty sure that this time, my 3rd attempt, I'll make it work. Onward...
6.03.04. Tools Page content written and formatted.
6.04.04. Took more screen captures of the mobile site in NetFront. Don't know if I'll have
time to optimize them and get them ready in time for Tuesday.
6.08.04. Presented the project in class today. The responses of amazement rocked my world! Watching
the desktop version of the site and the handheld version return different formatting and even different
images sizes on each site, was high impact stuff!
6.10.04. Documentation compiled. CD burned for final project submission. CGI form still not
working on Contact page, which will be top priority of new project - Phase Three.
Stay tuned for Progressive Devolution III
Return to the Devolution of the Rising Mobile TestNet Machines!
Coming to a PocketPC Near You!
Early embedded SMIL+XHTML Experiment
Regretfully, the HTML+TIME timing sequence below only works in the desktop IE browser, V5.0+
for Windows and no other browsers on the planet. Each line of text becomes bold and returns to
normal in sequence approximately 3 seconds apart from the previous, beginning with the top line.
I have not yet tested in IE 5.0 for Mac. I was hoping this might replace having to use RealPix and RealText,
which is not a cross-platform solution for the mobile streaming slideshow either.
SMIL Timing syntax consists of a set of
attributes for controlling media behavior, and
several types of time containers that group
media together for coordinated presentation.
