[Mapserver-users] mapserver for phones / wireless

[Jeff Hoffmann]

On May 27, 2004, at 4:23 PM, Brian Russo wrote:

> Right, I'm more concerned with the interface end of things than 
> actually
> outputting wbmp/png/whatever. Would it be possible to see some of the 
> stuff
> you've done? I'm mostly doing this in my head, I still have to find a 
> machine
> to stick mapserver on.

The only things that I've done for phones aren't publicly accessible 
(it contains MLS data and we're not allowed to show it to anyone that's 
not a member of our customer's boards).  You can see a quick overview 
of one product with some simulated screenshots at 
http://www.propertykey.com/website/services/mobile/index.jsp  The 
actual site is pretty simple from a programming perspective especially 
if you can target phones that support XHTML.  One thing you'll need to 
think about is that it's hard to enter text on phones so things that 
require a lot of interaction can be a pain.  If you have phones that 
only support WML, there's more of a learning curve and kind of a mental 
shift to a different type of page paradigm.  Also, in my experience 
there's a lot of lag with phones so you want to think about whether to 
split pages so you're not scrolling forever if it's too long vs. making 
them too small and introducing a lot of frustration from the lag 
involved in having to jump from page to page too often.  I don't know 
what other advice to give -- I think the best thing to do is to just 
jump in and get a feel for how different of a world it is.

ps: Openwave is a great place to learn about creating web sites for 
phones.  There's a lot of documentation there plus emulator software 
which makes things a lot easier.  Also, I think all providers have free 
developer sites that will give you more information about specific 
phones, sdks, forums, etc.  We focused on Sprint phones & they have 
good developer info.

--
Jeff Hoffmann
jeff at propertykey.com