Deepfish browser, a better experience coming for mobile devices?
I caught an announcement for a preview of Deepfish (IE for windows mobile) and it got me excited. Why? It renders like a desktop browser. The browsing experience appears to be a big improvement on the Nokia Webkit based browser that you find in the newer Nokia devices (and is really cool for being out for a long while now). Currently it doesn’t look like it will be a better experience than what the Safari browser in the iPhone promises but the point is the browser experience is getting much better for mobile devices.
I am not entirely convinced the desktop experience is a good thing for mobile devices over GSM or CDMA given the outrageous data plans we have in North America (although they are getting better in the US, not so much Canada). With dual mode (wifi + GSM or CDMA) devices it could be very cool. As this technology/experience improves I am reminded once again of the 1990’s and the web. Will developers even bother with the older WAP based slow browsers given most phones are replaced/dead/broken in two years or so? Do you take the time and invest in a stripped down site or do you just work on detecting the smaller screens and making some marginal improvements instead of big changes?
Figuring out if it is worth the effort is a tough call. Almost all the project participants here don’t use their devices for the web largely because they have a laptop nearby and the devices do not do what they want. What they want is the same experience they get on the PC. I think it is a good sign for RIA’s though. They might not need a J2EE version in the near future.
I am hoping to get my hands on a Windows mobile device running Deepfish this afternoon. I will report back if I do…
Adobe announces a bunch of stuff… but I like the Web Suite the most!
Adobe announcement of an announcement today is the big unveiling of their CS3 product line. Since Photoshop CS3 beta appeared in December there has been a lot of talk about the changes in the Adobe line but my thing is the Creative Suite CS3 Web Edition. More specifically I am interested in Dreamweaver CS3 and Contribute CS3.
I have been using both on campus here for a while and I can say they are both very nice upgrades from the previous versions. Adobe highlights the features of Spry integration for Dreamweaver but I have to say the new CSS based layouts that come with it are going to be the #1 hit. The templates are just basic layouts that offer a designer/developer a sound starting point to build a web site. The code is just amazingly simple and full of comments so you can easily understand what is going on. It is sorta what the campus CLF here was supposed to be but with no real style just straight structure.
That is not to say the Spry features aren’t cool either. Adobe has come a long way since last May with Spry and I think Spry integration will offer a lot of people a stepping stone into the tricky world of DOM scripting and AJAX. Spry stuff should be used wisely mind you 
I am a bit worried that people might use it and not think about accessibility or usability but time will tell.
Contribute on the other hand… Version 4 was released what feels like just last month. This new version is a CS3 release and like all the other products is a universal binary for mac users. That along with the updated CS3 branding, blogging, integration with FLV, IE 7, Firefox, rendering improvements, and some other general clean up make the latest version of Contribute a lot more attractive to update from version 3.
I am really excited about these updated tools. It should be interesting to hear what other people think once the try copies are available for download (no idea when that will be).
UW Opinion goes live
“A moderated forum for members of the University of Waterloo community to discuss post-secondary affairs and campus issues” is now live. It is a sort of letters to the editor meets a blog thing and will hopefully be the place where some good opinions are posted (good or bad) from students, staff, and faculty. It is hardly an earth shattering web application but it does mark a positive move on the part of the university and I am glad to have had some role to play in that.
Last term we started building an application that would act as a letters to the editor replacement for the old campus newspaper the Gazette. We got a working app done fairly quickly but it sat around for a while as people had other things on the go (the 50th Anniversary build up put off a lot of projects). We sat down a few weeks ago and pulled together the final parts and now it has the support of the top admin at the university.
It is a Ruby on Rails app that was started last term by Sasha Papo. Catherine finished it off nicely but we know there might be a few odd things going on. If you notice anything, let me know. Big thanks to the co-op students who worked on it.
Update: yes I forgot to link to UW Opinion, I fixed that
Creating a mobile version of a static site
Last week I mentioned a bit about the redirect script based on HTTP_USER_AGENT we use to send mobiles to a special version of the home page. This week I have some basic documentation written along with the PHP for download that we use on the mobile.php version of the home page.
Essentially all we are doing is parsing content from the static site and generating a mobile friendly version that is just content in smaller chunks. They are identified by their div class or id. Have a look at the documentation and let me know if anything needs more explanation.
UW Events updated to version 2.0
It certainly isn’t perfect but it is pretty cool. Our big Ruby on Rails app, UW Events version 2.0 is now running in production with only a couple hiccups this morning. This long awaited update has:
- upcoming.org integration
- Facebook integration
- email and SMS reminders
- personal events – things that don’t need to be approved and appear in your own ical feed
- some profile information so the email and SMS work – it will only be used in UW Events, if that bugs you, don’t use the feature
- improvements in the search
- live-ish preview on the submission page and some tweaks on its layout
As with the previous version we have hCal all over the place, some hCard in the footer, and a simple approval process. After a few bug fixes and creating a mobile version, we are going to leave it alone for a bit unless something big is broken. Over the next few weeks we will fix some CSS oddness but beyond that we are done for now We will have it in RubyForge by the end of April though so if you want new features, that will be your chance.
There is a pretty cool Ruby project that will consume April so look for that in May!
