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Vodafone Move Invites Web Development Chaos
hoagiecat writes "Web developers want mobile phone users to be able to access their sites, but mobile browsers generally choke on heavyweight HTML put together for traditional Web browsers. A host of services have sprung up that allow two sites — one for mobile users, one for PC users — to coexist at the same URL, with the browser's user agent string distinguishing between the two. Vodafone has come at the problem from the other end, offering a new service that translates traditional Web pages into mobile-friendly ones on the fly — but it strips out the user agent in the process, breaking sites designed around the other strategy. And Web developers are mad. Will similar moves by other carriers disrupt this nascent Web development ecosystem?"
yep. spoof the ua string.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
As a Vodafone "business" customer for the last 15 months, Vodafone is doing exactly what the article claims:
... It's unclear if Vodafone removed the user agent capability for "diabolical" reasons, such as to maintain firm control over the content that users can access, or if it was a legitimate mistake, Harper said.
Companies that are on Vodafone's "white list," which is a group of Vodafone-approved services, were notified of the change and the operator is passing the user agent correctly for those services, developers say.
The issue at Vodafone is they need a revenue engine that cannot be hampered so they artificially create one. With the recent court rulings over VoIP services like Truphone, Vodafone is seeing disruptive technologies come into play. This is just business doing the right thing for itself but not for the customer.
For what it is worth, within the group of people I work with (about 2000 people), many of us are using Truphone over the wireless broadband we are provided. Suddenly, my 400-600 pound mobile bills are now down to 50/month with loads of unused minutes rolling over. The story is similar with many other people here and across other networks. Are you surprised?
Don't I know it. I use a BlackBerry to surf the web most mornings on the train, and I see these all the time. I've learned to avoid some links specifically because I don't want to waste my time trying to navigate a crappy mobile version of a site. For example, I no longer click on any Reuters or USA Today news links on Slashdot or Digg, because rather serve me the article I asked for, these sites entirely ignore the URL I sent it and drop me on their mobile page, from which (I guess) I'm expected to navigate to the thing I originally wanted. Unfortunately the mobile page contains links to news categories and a list of the most popular stories, and it's usually impossible to find the one I wanted. Many news sites use similar services. The big provider seems to be Crisp Wireless, which proudly announces its responsibility for this crapiness at the bottom of each mobile page.
My newest pet peeve is the BBC News site. If I type "news.bbc.co.uk" in my desktop browser I get the BBC News page. But on my BlackBerry the site ignores the URL and "helpfully" redirects me to a page where I can select whether I want their Mobile or Desktop edition. It's nice that I at least get an option, but it adds a page load to the process of simply reading the news. And when I select the Desktop link they send me to the main BBC site, not the News site, so I get to make a third page load when I click on the News link to visit the page I originally requested about a minute ago.
How are these mobile sites supposed to help us again?
The site content shouldn't need to change - only the presentation.
All that needs to be done is to serve up a different style sheet depending on the user agent, or a default 'safe' stylesheet, or none at all.
Determining which style sheet to use will necessitate peeking at the user-agent so Vodaphones approach could be problematical. Maybe if they had a meta tag to tell their gizmo not to process the site.