Re: [IUG] WebPac Pro - ProStyles

["David Jones" <djones at scu dot edu>]

>>> On Tue, Oct 23, 2007 at 12:55 PM, Steve Sowder <sowder at andrews dot edu> wrote: 
> Or, Airpac is more than a stylesheet?

Yes. It's a separate Apache Coyote server that can serve pages in both HTML and WML (#105591). It's use is not limited to mobile devices and can be used successfully for speed with dial-up connections and for accessibility with text-only browsers. When it was developed (2001-02), it was pretty advanced as far as WAP applications went and perfectly suited the mobile browsers that were available at the time.

It sends completely different HTML than WebPac, so even if you configure your stylesheets for the handheld media rule (generally, or, by device as you wanted) to render your (someday!) valid XHTML, you'd still be sending out way too much markup for mobile browsers. The whole point of the AirPac was to provide a similar level of markup overhead for the web as used to be required for the character-based system. That is, it's compact and fast, but it isn't pretty or convenient (navigation is more limited). 

Until you have a templating system that is based on a real, server-based framework model (i.e., javascript doesn't cut it as it still has to be sent to the browser!), then there's really no other way to get the simplicity and compactness of AirPac out of WebPac. That's going to require quite a bit of work on Innovative's part, and I sure hope they move in that direction, but in the meantime, AirPac is there if you want/need it.

Now that the browsers in handhelds are catching up to modern standards and bandwidth is greatly improving, it's not even so important to worry about using the handheld media rule anymore. IMO, my WebPAC looks mighty fine on my iPhone without AirPac, but AirPac definitely loads and works a whole lot faster. Until all mobile browsers are as advanced, the handheld media rule applied now will already help other, less advanced browsers, but only if they support it properly in the first place. And until true broadband is ubiquitous, you're going to have a hard time beating AirPac on rendering speed.

HTH,
David


_____________________________________________________________________
David Jones                                     mailto:djones at scu dot edu
Library Systems Manager                  http://www.scu.edu/library/
University Library                               fax:   408-551-1805
Santa Clara University                            phone: 408-551-7167
500 El Camino Real
Santa Clara CA 95053-0500
_____________________________________________________________________
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
-- Philip K. Dick