S60 Open to new features

This is not stictly net video related, but it's about the new S60 browser and making pages mobile friends so hopefully not too OT! :P

I was fortunate enough to play a bit with the new S60 browser at the CeBIT and I noticed that it seems to ignore CSS stylesheets directed at "handheld" media. You guys are doing a great job making the web more useful on mobiles but if this is deliberate behaviour I think it would be a great shame.

When using CSS to style and layout an (X)HTML page it is possible to specify a particular media the styling should apply to (either via the <link> tag's media attribute or using @media inside the CSS). A device should only apply the style sheet info that matches its own media type as well as any styles not directed at a particular media (in which case media="all" is implied)

For PC's the correct media type to apply is screen, for phones and PDAs strictly speaking it should be handheld. However, the new S60 browser always seems to use the screen CSS even when handheld CSS is available. (Btw, the old S60 browser gets this right!)

This means it becomes impossible for web-designers to offer an alternative page layout / design which is optimised for mobile devices which is a big shame. Granted, the new S60 browser does a very good job of displaying pages like they would on a PC, but there are still good reasons why a mobile optimised design should be preferred (when one is provided by the page designer that is):

• it can use less and / or smaller graphics to reduce the user's data charges
• it can have a simpler layout to minimise horizontal scrolling on a small screen.
• it can display additional links to skip portions of the page (eg: "skip navigation", "back to top of page" etc) which may be redundant and hence not displayed on desktop browsers

Of course, very few pages use handheld stylesheets (most don't even bother specifying any media) so I can understand the S60 browser trying to emulate a desktop browser as best as it can. However, I think if handheld CSS is available it should not be ignored - otherwise there is even less incentive for web designers to use it. My recommendation would be: If a page does not specify any CSS media, only has screen media or a mixture of the two then that CSS should be applied (no change there then). However if some handheld CSS is available then the browser should use that (together any CSS for no specific media / all medias) but ignore CSS for any other media such as screen.

That way on 99% of sites there is no difference to the current behaviour - the browser just tries to make the best of what it's got. But on the few sites that actually specify handheld media (which would imply that the designer has deliberately designed a mobile version that he/she expects to be used) that gets used so the user always gets the best and most accessible experience.

Well that's my $0.02 anyway! Sorry this post is so long but I just had to get it off my chest in a place where Nokia developers might actually see it. Thanks for reading!!

Makes sense to me! Comments from our OSS browser people?

Hey Jukka, can't believe you wrote this blog post without referring to my Smartphones Show! 8-)

Or does it not play *directly* enough on the smartphone?

You'd probably need 3G data for 300kbps to be streamed in real time.... I'm stuck on GPRS here!!

Just for the record, for others, the Smartphones Show is MP4 (Nseries compatible) and is at http://3lib.ukonline.co.uk/sshow/

Steve Litchfield

Steve, it's in HTTP server and thus not streaming right? My post is more about streaming video, but I realized it might not be clear enough (especially since I mention Google Video etc.), sorry for the confusion!

Err... plenty of http videos stream, depending on file type. Windows Media and Quicktime/MP4 videos can all be set to stream when encoding. Certainly the Smartphones Show streams fine on the desktop. Though when I went there on the Nokia 3250, all I got was file too large 8-)

I think asking mobiles to stream 50MB videos is unrealistic anyway. 50MB on my European pay-as-you-go data tariff would cost me £350!

Steve

That's right, but we don't support HTTP streaming.. so there is one thing to add to our list :)

WLAN is hopefully disrupting things also.

Series 60 devices only stream from RTSP by default. To stream via other protocols you have to provide your own solution
:-)

Don't know about UIQ!

Boom

great info Jukka ! Thanks.

Speaking of Flash Video format you can use some server tools to automatically encode Flash video into 3gp and stream them via RTSP :)We used this solution for a project and it works great !

Flash Lite player currently does not allow you to play a flv file but you can do it using the 3gp format.

For what concern the data I totally agree with Steve : you need a 3G connection !

if you want to do this, you should use record internet radio tool first!

Sorry suangsang, I didn't get that?

to Jukka, what do you mean? i can't understand!

thts great

Nokia announced a new mobile internet video experience which enables enhanced internet video consumption by bringing You Tube videos into the hands of Nokia

I came across Jame's post because I am trying to use a media stylesheet of the handheld variety for a website i am building. I just tested it on N95 and was quite honestly stunned to see that the N95 browser did not seem to detect the handheld stylesheet at all. Media stylesheets are a great idea, and seem to be a W3C standards things, so, I find that very odd to hear that S60 browsers do not support it.

A lot can be done with stylesheets to make a "standard" website much easier to navigate on mobile. So why are handheld media stylesheets seemingly not supported? :(

I came across Jame's post because I am trying to use a media stylesheet of the handheld variety for a website i am building. I just tested it on N95 and was quite honestly stunned to see that the N95 browser did not seem to detect the handheld stylesheet at all. Media stylesheets are a great idea, and seem to be a W3C standards things, so, I find that very odd to hear that S60 browsers do not support it.

A lot can be done with stylesheets to make a "standard" website much easier to navigate on mobile. So why are handheld media stylesheets seemingly not supported? :(