h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Will the DNA team restart the H2G2 "<./>OnTheMove</.>" project and put our beloved site on WAP/iMODE mobile phones? The XML StyleSheets should still be in cold storage somewhere, so it shouldn't take much to get them working with SSO and the updates carried since Rupert.

To quote our hero:

"What we are now focussed on at h2g2 is what happens when people start to share information while they are on the move. Soon we will start to see devices arriving that combine palmtop computers with cellphones with Internet devices with GPS systems. That - in a phrase we hear over and over again when people talk about the Internet - will change everything. You'll be able to read and write to the Guide wherever you are: at the station, in the plane, on a park bench, in your car (pulled over to the side of the road with the handbrake on, of course) in a café. And when you write in something as simple as 'The coffee here is lousy!' the Guide will know exactly what to do with that information and where to put it. And if you see, a few seconds later, a note which says 'Yes, but the cheesecake is good' it might be worth looking round the other tables to see who you've just made contact with." (A550955)

B.

The WAP service was never based on XSLT stylesheets - it was an ad-hoc set of perl scripts which are unlikely to work even if we wanted to use them. So any WAP service would be designed from scratch, to take advantage of whatever advances in mobile technology there have been in the intervening time.

Surely there's no need to take a long and expensive step backward to support WAP based mobiles? WAP was old hat the moment it came out. h2g2 is perfectly accessible using built in web browsers on wi-fi enabled Pocket PC devices and GPRS/3G mobiles, so anyone who is serious about wanting access on the move would probably be better investing in one of those

If the technology for phones catches up enough, perhaps there could be an even more reduced skin than plain to meet them half way. However I doubt the BBC want to give up all their extra self-marketing and legalese stuff on a page and it is unreasonable to suggest that all the page contents for articles be reduced. So the conversation posts might be the most accessible. That could be one at a time - though some long ones would still require a lot of scrolling.

Don't all the conversation posts hang off of entries anyway, SEF?

No, they don't all hang off entries, Whoami. Posts on conversation threads hang off forums and not all those forums are attached to entries. But that wasn't what I was intending in this case. I was thinking of a skin interface which allowed one to get more easily to the conversation threads than scrolling through an article on a tiny screen would. That could mean: links at the top of the page; the ability to search for a forum or thread rather than an article or a post; or the ability to turn the page contents off in skin preferences.

Thanks for explaining that, SEF. I think the idea of a PDA/smartphone-compatible skin would be great, (just for the record ).

Whoami?

Plain seems to work reasonably well on the Pocket PC, but it's not perfect. I've got the stylesheet saved to my PC so I'll eventually get round to having a look at how it works and how to tinker with it to achieve the best result on that platform.

I can assure you that as soon as I can afford to buy one of the afore mentioned gadgets I will be wanting a 'lite' skin too!

'New Stuff' is great I just can't afford it as a student

Mel

My phone supports xhtml (basic + mobile profile) and css...

Frankie

So what does h2g2 look like on it?

Bloomin' awful if you use AvantGo!

B.