WAP2 improvements

[SlammedDime]

ok then!! how on earth are the poor saps that arnt rich enough to have a smart fone sposed to browse from their fone, just screw them they aint worth nothing? lol

Pretty much... the market share of wap/wap2/imode devices is so small it's not worth the effort.

[texasman1979]

http://www.email-marketing-reports.com/wireless-mobile/smartphone-statistics.htm

that states that you are a bit off.

the lesser fones still have 50% of the entire mobile market, that sir is at least 1 billion people across the planet. Are you saying that a billion people is not a large enough slice of the  population to consider?

and i will say, that in 2015+, when wap2 and similar still carries 20-30% of the market, your still talking about 100s of millions of people. to disregard those types of numbers is fool hearty.

[SlammedDime]

You're comparing apples to oranges... those figures are based on type of operating system and the browser on it for ALL mobile phones.  That includes folks that may or may not have/use a dataplan.  You need to look at statistics for actual web browsing and see what the percentage of web users is from mobile phones.

Straight from that article too...

Mobile entertainment company Mxyer also track mobile device and OS use. Their 2010 review revealed Android devices accounted for 40% of visits to their mobile site in Dec 2010. Other popular operating systems included RIM at 38% and Windows Mobile at 12%. Apple's iOS accounted for 5% of visits.

40+38+12+5 = 95% of mobile web visitors using a smart phone with a fully capable browser to their mobile site.

A look at Statcounter's Mobile browser stats...
http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_browser-ww-monthly-201103-201103-bar

The top 6 total 90.44% coming from a Smart device.

So your argument here is still failing... wap/wap2/imode is still in the very very small percentile (bordering IE6 usage in comparison of major Desktop browser usage) and is dwindling just the same.  I think this is a pretty solid argument to either not improve wap/wap2/imode, if not remove it all together from the next version.

[texasman1979]

the thing im pointing out, is that with a better wap2(etc), more would have the ability to view the pages. take my site for instance. the vast majority of those that will benefit most from it, are people that are on the lower end of society. they do have fones, and im for sure going to push people coming to my site any which way they can.

and ie6 is a different argument altogether. even broke people have decent computers, even if they still happen to be on dial up. do we just stop providing dialup internet for those that live in the country?

now if you was to want to eliminate something, eliminate wap and imode. wap2 is still used by a large enough number of people to be viable. percentages dont give an accurate depiction anyway. say it might be 5%. that 5% is well more than 100 million people. thats a lot of potentially good participants in forum activities and discussions.

the minority in many cases is still a lot of people, and if you had your way pushed forward, thousands, if not millions of people would be left out. why, so they have to buy an iphone? forced progress is not always the best, let it roll till it really does have a very insignificant following.

futhermore, a wap2 theme is simple enough to make better without that much effort. it really isnt that hard to just simply add a bit to the theme that currently exists for a bit more functionality, no need to delete it from the package.

like take me for instance, i had to get my internet card for my laptop turned back on so i could work on my website at work. i simply cant afford to get an iphone or ipad at this time, as well as many others. its hundreds of dollars, and when you think about the millions effected by your opinion, its billions. would you like to buy me an iphone? lol

[青山 素子]

I think this is a pretty solid argument to either not improve wap/wap2/imode, if not remove it all together from the next version.

I wouldn't like to see wap2 go away, it's even useful when you're on a bandwidth-constrained connection with a desktop browser.

the thing im pointing out, is that with a better wap2(etc), more would have the ability to view the pages. take my site for instance. the vast majority of those that will benefit most from it, are people that are on the lower end of society. they do have fones, and im for sure going to push people coming to my site any which way they can.

Sure, these people can't afford high-end phones, but then how are they affording data plans for these other phones? Given data prices in some countries, it's not really all affordable to maintain a data plan for luxury. Note that many "feature phones" actually can't do real HTTP, but require a WAP gateway.

even broke people have decent computers, even if they still happen to be on dial up. do we just stop providing dialup internet for those that live in the country?

Some actually do not and use public resources (such as local libraries or community centers) for internet connectivity.

Also, don't confuse dial-up access, which is driven by a profit motive, to SMF which has never been profit-driven. If SMF was a paid product and a large number of customers wanted IE6 compatibility, you can bet that would be high on the priority list. Not having a profit motivation does provide for some nice flexibility in choosing what to do. Perhaps instead of concentrating on enhancing the experience for a quickly dwindling audience, the project can focus on visionary stuff.

the minority in many cases is still a lot of people, and if you had your way pushed forward, thousands, if not millions of people would be left out. why, so they have to buy an iphone? forced progress is not always the best, let it roll till it really does have a very insignificant following.

See the point about not having a profit motive. It's easy for a project to just disregard certain groups because they aren't in the target audience.

futhermore, a wap2 theme is simple enough to make better without that much effort. it really isnt that hard to just simply add a bit to the theme that currently exists for a bit more functionality, no need to delete it from the package.

Note that WAP uses XHTML Mobile Profile, which is a somewhat-different version of XHTML. There is also a stripped-down CSS profile as well. This limits how rich such an experience can be and also limits certain features that might depend on the backend of certain features outside of that profile that are in full XHTML.

i simply cant afford to get an iphone or ipad at this time, as well as many others. its hundreds of dollars, and when you think about the millions effected by your opinion, its billions. would you like to buy me an iphone? lol

Lots of people can't. It's not a big deal. WAP is not meant to be a full replacement, it's very simple. It's intended to be small to limit the amount of data being sent (and charged for). Looking at some of the suggestions in the original post, they would or have the potential to vastly increase the size of responses, costing people more.

1. Adding an "unread" link on every page: small bit of code addition, but multiply it by a number of pages in a typical browsing session and you could be 20k or more of data total that people are being charged for.

2. Enabling image display: How do you show large images on a small phone display? You'll either push the full image to the browser which is a lot of data, or have to resize on the server, using a lot of CPU and memory.

3. Enabling links: This actually shouldn't be too bad to do.


I think that time should be better spent on making a mobile-friendly lightweight theme that will work on "not-quote-smart"phones that can actually handle full HTML than doing renovations on a display type in large decline.

[KensonPlays]

I say, the best of BOTH worlds. Update the wap2 for simpler phones like half my family, and a mobile theme for the other half....

[NanoSector]

I say, the best of BOTH worlds. Update the wap2 for simpler phones like half my family, and a mobile theme for the other half....

Which is what I have been trying to say but they won't accept that *sigh

EDIT: @motoko (right?): Argument 1 is an invalid point, to be exact.
There is also a "Enter the full mode" link on each page. Wouldn't that absorb the same amount of data?

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

I didn't read everything in this topic, but would like to point out that I'm one of those who use ;wap2 for efficiency and cost. My phone can handle the full Curve view as well, but I choose to use wap2. I am also certain I'm not the only one doing this, and so I really think Wap2 should be kept at least, if not improved upon...

[NanoSector]

I didn't read everything in this topic, but would like to point out that I'm one of those who use ;wap2 for efficiency and cost. My phone can handle the full Curve view as well, but I choose to use wap2. I am also certain I'm not the only one doing this, and so I really think Wap2 should be kept at least, if not improved upon...

Which is what I do too, my phone can handle Curve too. It's just amazingly slow.

[KensonPlays]

Mine can to. It's at a average speed

[DoctorMalboro]

Wap is slower and crappier in many ways and it can be a hell of a PITA to update it. Most people who use it doesn't like it and it's not an actual requirement nowadays since all decent phones have a default browser and even devs are making browsers for many phones (including old ones that has less limitations). Why bother then?

[KensonPlays]

Wap3

* Kcmartz runs away

[青山 素子]

Wap is slower and crappier in many ways and it can be a hell of a PITA to update it.

Actually, by its design, WAP should be much faster as it must be simpler. It was designed for feature phones with very simple processors. If it's "slow", it's more than likely a problem with the cellular network and not WAP itself.

As for being difficult to update, that can be the case. WAP requires a special language and WAP2 uses a very restricted subset of XHTML. Making sure to actually comply with the standards can take up a lot of time.

Most people who use it doesn't like it and it's not an actual requirement nowadays since all decent phones have a default browser and even devs are making browsers for many phones (including old ones that has less limitations). Why bother then?

Have you done a scientific poll to determine if people don't like it, or are you conflating your experience as identical to that of others?

[Vestifex]

Wap is slower and crappier in many ways and it can be a hell of a PITA to update it. Most people who use it doesn't like it and it's not an actual requirement nowadays since all decent phones have a default browser and even devs are making browsers for many phones (including old ones that has less limitations). Why bother then?

And what is with all the people not having a "decent phone"

I for example have a Nokia 2330 and will likely be using it for the next few years.
I use wap2  at least five time a day to check my forums. Doing this I have internet cost on my phone max 2€ an month, most times below 1€.
When i used my phone first I didn´t know wap2 was possible with the forum, so I used standard html. It didn´t work well with my display and the cost were 4 times higher.

[donjazzy]

Why you guys are simply arguing here lol, some guys are busy developing wap2 to the extent that it is becoming better than the full version see example here http://appiiforum.com/index.php?wap2. I know of a fellow in Asia who earns hundreds of dollars monthly from wap2 he developed.

[Antechinus]

That's much the same as the current smf version, except for a few different colours here and there.