Brian

I guess I hadn't appreciated that was your intention. I thought it was fall-out from your desire to avoid blocking behaviour.

In our work in the Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group, we ask people to consider the user's context and to provide a "Thematically Consistent" user experience, not necessarily the same user experience as they would experience were they using a desktop. The reason being that often the purpose of a Web site is better realised in a mobile context by tailoring the navigation and the content with mobile rather than desktop use cases in mind.

I think it is at best highly questionable for you to interfere with a Web site has specifically created an experience for the mobile user, and to thwart their intentions by deliberately misleading them as to the user's context.

Jo

Hi Jalberto

We are looking at many web format including those listed.For Flash currently you get text back "Flash not supported".

Driving the product forward new PC formats will be adapted and supported.

BR
Brian

After reading plenty of posts blasting VF for employing content adaptation I'd like to add something new to the debate - a user perspective.

It seems the debate has been so far limited to VF vs. developers of mobile-friendly sites and provides of services to mobile users. I am neither. Nor do I work for VF, Novarra or any affiliated or in any way affected company. I'm just a user, albeit with a strong interest in mobile Internet.

First, let's discuss the notion of mobile-friendly sites being what users want. As a user, I don't want to access 'mobile-friendly' sites. I want the real thing without having to spend a small fortune on iPhone. The quality of mobile-friendly versions of the sites I use varies greatly, and I am yet to find one which provides access to essentially the same information as the full site. In most cases, mobile-friendly sites are designed for the least common denominator. Altalia site mentioned by somebody on the forum is the perfect example: it lacks many things I would want to see on the phone. Want to access the site in French or German? Ich verstehe nicht. Need to check flight schedules for next week? You can wait until you get to your desk. Seat map for your flight? Nah, you wouldn't possibly want this in a cab while talking to your travel agent. Same applies to multiple other sites. In short, I want to be able to access the real Internet on my mobile phone, not the stripped down version that somebody (site developer? hired service?) decided I need on my mobile phone.

Second, there's nothing wrong with replacing UA string. I think of WTE as being an agent working on my behalf, not just a simple HTTP proxy. The sites are being accessed with, and the response is being processed by the transcoding server - not by the mobile browser. So the UA string is perfectly valid. If the UA string is left untouched, I may not get access to the information I need (see the example above), or a site may reply with a polite 200 OK and a nicely formatted HTML page offering links to IE and FF - the 'supported browsers' - instead of 406. Neither outcome is good.

I appreciate the pain VF's approach causes for people who make their living developing mobile versions of web sites. I further understand that the transcoding services are far from being perfect, so in some cases it is indeed easier/faster/better to use the mobile site. I vote for the dual-URL approach - a special URL (perhaps .mobi) for the mobile version. That way I can have a choice of what to access.

And finally, I would like to see more effort spent on coming up with standards for transcoding services, and far less effort spent on petitions, press releases, and articles and blogs that all quote the same people and the same posts.

Thank you.

Legalalien, I am sure you have some kind of affiliation to either Novarra, Vodafone or some other vendor of Reformatting Proxy. After all has been said here, your posting sounds as fake as a 7-dollar note.

Anyway, as an exercize, I'll answer your post seriously. I begin:

If you ask an unaware end-user if they want the full internet on their mobile phone, they may answer "yes". The only problem is that...they won't use it.
Using a reformatted web site on a mobile phone is just too clunky. People get tired way before they get what they are looking for and, typically, do not come back for more. They prefer to wait until they are home or at the office, or just look up the same info in a newspaper or even make a phone call. If mobile-optimized sites do not have all the features found on the corresponding web sites, there is a very good reason for it: mobile users won't use it anyway. Worse than that, too many features make the mobile UI more clutterd and people have a harder time finding the main functions too.
I'll tell you more, even the iPhone with its great usability is better off with mobile optimized sites by far (both because of speed and ease of use).
Finally, I tried Voda's reformatting proxy today. It is a piece of crap. And, if you are a real person, you should give it a try before you speak in its defense.
BTW: Did I mention that you can't do HTTPS go through a reformatting proxy without either a) giving up the reformatting or b) giving up security?

Luca

The problem here is not that you won't be able to use the transcoder when you want to (you can always change your settings if you so choose), the problem is that Vodafone is not respecting mobile site authors by faking the User-Agent and transcoding BY DEFAULT. What if a site provides both desktop and mobile versions of the seat mep for your flight? Would you prefer the desktop version that's transcoded by Vodafone, or the version by the original author that's crafted carefully to fit in your cell phone? I am not sure how much trancoded sites you've seen, but the quality of which really varys, and it's usually a gamble. I mean, think about it: do you think Vodafone knows what's best to show on a third party web site, versus the site owner themselves? In most cases, Vodafone probably don't even have a human to tune the transcoded web site for you.



How about if a site employs heavy Javascript and ajax to give you the information you need? Flash? Yes you can fake the User-Agent, but you get desktop oriented sites back. How do you transcode desktop gmail? How do you transcode heavily interactive Flash? When a site author does not provide mobile access, they by definition don't care about mobile users. The right way is not transcoding. The right way is to raise awareness that there is this large mobile user base out there, that site owners are compelled to craft content specifically for mobile consumption. The problem is that Vodafone is not helping site owners to create mobile-targeted sites. They are in fact hurting the very mechanism by which site owners detect whether the incoming request is mobile or not.



That works and I've posted the same suggestion elsewhere, with a even more comprehensive list of special URLs. But the issue at hand is that Vodafone is messing needlessly with the User-Agent string, disturbing the prevailing practice of the mobile web as a whole.



It's quite clear who you are speaking for. The issue is real. Vodafone is acting as if they are doing a favor for users, when in fact they are doing it to mess with every mobile site owners out there that are not on their "white list". And that, my friend, actually is NOT doing you, the user, favors. When the problem is real and immediate, you just have to do all those, including standards.

Adding to a concrete example: Suppose you are accessing GMail via on your Vodafone (gmail.com) By masquerading the User-Agent, gmail is returning the AJAX version instead of the mobile version (this just an example citing a well-known site, I don't know whether gmail is in Voda's whitelist or not). What if the transcoder fails to transcode the AJAX interaction? Transcoding the AJAX-based interface into page-based interaction seems to be a non-trivial undertaking, no matter how smart the transcoder is. Something is bound to be broken. Vodafone will be returning the broken gmail to ALL users by default. To a less-sophisticated user, they will be contacting google for the problem. Google, knowing that it is the fault of the Vodafone transcoder, will be redirecting the user to Vodafone. Is Vodafone prepared for this kind of customer service request? Is Vodafone prepared to essentially create a mobile version of gmail, based on Gmail's own AJAX interface?

I'm citing gmail because it is well-known. This problem applies to all the sites out there, especially Web 2.0 sites that employs heavy AJAX for interaction.

If Vodafone would have left the User-Agent alone, sites like Gmail and Flickr would have returned their own mobile version.

The sheer lack of thought on this by Vodafone is mind-boggling.

It’s a bit surprising to read the same argument that we’ve heard for years from various carriers defending their walled garden approach: “the reason we don’t let you access something is because you don’t need it anyway.” I thought it’d been universally rejected by the end-users (as evidenced by the ever-shrinking number of walled gardens), but perhaps I was wrong. In any case, I am not here to discuss particulars of VF/Novarra solution or argue that transcoding is the greatest thing since sliced bread. I have not tried WTE, as I live in the US, but reformatting full pages to fit small screens works. Millions of people use Opera Mini, which does basically the same thing as WTE and are happy with it. If WTE sucks as badly as you imply, I’m sure VF will hear about it.

I don’t see anything fake about the statement that I like to have access to the full site and not a small excerpt deemed suitable for mobile users. I do applaud VF for providing such access to their users regardless of the limitations of the current system. Hopefully, others will follow suit.

Questioning opponents’ motives instead of supplying logical arguments is better left to politicians. I am not affiliated with Novarra, VF, any carrier or any other vendor of transcoding services, as I have already stated, so let’s keep discussion focused on technology.

I think that I know best what I need on the site - not Vodafone, or the site owner. As a user, I want to access information I need as quickly as I can. If the mobile version does provide what I need, I will use it - it will most certainly be faster and easier to use on the phone than a transcoded one. But when it does not, and believe me, it happens more often than not, I want to be able to access the full site. Speed and convenience are important, but the ability to access information is more important. Sounds like a pretty reasonable requirement to me.



Well...I haven't tried WTE, but apparently there is a link to unmodified site if the transcoded site doesn't work well. I understand that some users may prefer the defaults to be swapped, but I'll take either approach right now over not being able to get the transcoded site at all.

Now, I am all for site owners creating mobile-targeted sites. Just keep them separate from full site so that I have an option to access either one.

It's clear that you are savvy enough to know what transcoding is and prefer it. Who doesn't want all users to be savvy like you? The central issue is not that you do not have a choice. I have no problems with Vodafone transcoding desktop-only sites, or if the user explicitly agrees and understand the consequences, masquarade as desktop and transcode all sites. I have no problems with Opera transcoding sites for their Mini browser (which, BTW, is the user's own choice too). The issue here is that Vodafone, being the common carrier, abuses their position to needlessly alter the very mechanism BY DEFAULT that makes the mobile web work, giving you potentially broken sites when they could work just fine if they would have left the mobile-optimized sites alone. Not all users are savvy like you, who knows what "transcoding" is and have the right expectations.

The mobile web is still in its infancy. I am not about to argue against you that some mobile-oriented sites do not work as well as they should be, when compared to their desktop counterparts. As more users like you come on board, demand rises. More sites will go mobile, more attention will be paid towards usability design by site owners. Ultimately, you'll find more choices, and some will perhaps work to your liking. By disturbing the basic mechanism with which site owners detect mobile phones, Vodafone is not helping to advance the mobile web.