I did some changes in our WML code (trying to achieve compliance with the T65/T68 phones which are not co-operating with our validated WML 1.1 code), so I would be grateful if you could test for us the WAP headlines for OSNews (only the headlines), via [any of] your WAP-capable phones. Trying the wap-capable web browsers, only Opera 6.05+ can render our WAP correctly (previous versions fail to render the buttons). As for a RSS/RDF newsfeed, we have one available, we recently added a Mozilla sidebar feature (check at the end of the page) and we still support KlipFolio. Thank you everyone!
WML Testing for OSNews
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Eugenia, are there statistics on how many people use the WAP version of osnews.com? Just curious…
Unfortunately, no. I don’t have any statistics available to me. But overtime, I had some people emailing me about the WAP system, so I guess that a few people are using it to grab the OSNews headlines.
BTW, is anyone using our “Email a friend” system?
What “Email a friend” system?
Okay, I saw it, in fact I’ve seen it before, but I have never used it, I don’t have any friends 🙂
WAP is crap lol
Gosh, how I hate such comments. Care to elaborate? Please?
English Ericsson T39m – ‘Cannot display: malformed content’.
Nearly hangs the phone.
I made a search about this error. It is your gateway spitting this error and not the WML parser. If you use another gateway, you might be more lucky.
We have an email to a friend feature? Cool… that could have saved me some time :/
Cannot display malformed content.
Please retry! I made two more changes!! Thanks!
Since you have an RDF newsfeed, why not try to get it added as a Slashdot slashdox? Even the Brunching Shuttlecocks (a humor site) has one.
OSNews already has a slashbox on ./ for everyone to choose it from his preferences/homepage and display it in his ./ homepage.
compare WAP to others such as G3 in places like japan and in US not many people use WAP. I think we should work more on G3 in the US not this
forgot to say, soory to piss you off there but I saw that in wierd a few years ago thought it sounded funny.
I have a Blackberry RIM so I can test this out 😉 I check OSNews daily on the bus to work 😉
Shawn.
I get this error msg
“Variable name has to begin with alpha or ‘_’ (before or at line 29)”
This is on a SonyEricsson T200
heh.. buggy phones.
Your WML parser dies because it finds either the GNU”/”Linux or the $ symbol on that line of the wml source code and it doesn’t like these symbols.
I took out the $ sign of the code. Please retry Stefan! Thanks!
Works great on my magcom (http://www.magcom.no/), but I only get the headlines and not the stories behind them.
– fred_og_ro
This is working fine on Siemens S45
Now I get a front page, but there’s no link to the headlines. Maybe you just haven’t coded that yet?
Thanx for fast action Eugenia, I honestly have missed OSNews in WAP, since I use to wap quite alot (pretty useful here in Sweden, and I get alot of free-of-charge wapping and soon GPRS)
Now I get a front page, but there’s no link to the headlines. Maybe you just haven’t coded that yet?
Thanx for fast action Eugenia, I honestly have missed OSNews in WAP, since I use to wap quite alot (pretty useful here in Sweden, and I get alot of free-of-charge wapping and soon GPRS)
What I’d really like to see on OSNews is the ability to view the site using Avantgo on my Palm.
Sure, I can tell avantgo to sync OSNews onto my palm right now. Problem is, it displays all the text in the order that it is in the HTML. So I have to scroll down past all the links that are normally on the left side of the screen. I click (tap) a link. Again, have to scroll down all the way.
I also tried using wap.osnews.com. Seems like avantgo isn’t too keen on displaying wml, though. I do get a list of headlines, but no way to acces the stories. Or is it simply that you haven’t coded any links yet, like ealm suggested?
I really like the way Slahdot does this. It somehow detects it is being accessed by avantgo, and presents me with a mini-version of the site. Could something similar be done on OSNews?
I too have had problems rendering websites in general. Most websites are read from top-left to bottom-right when they have to be squashed on the Y axis. It would be really neat if, when you access osnews with a device with very limited horizontal screensize, the menus and headers were trimmed or accessible via a hyperlink only.
(then opera and konqueror users can configure their user agent to get an ad-free view)
Working, no link anywhere but it’s working
WE HAVE Avantgo compatibility layer for many months now!
Read how to enable it on the “contact us” page (we have to direct Avantgo and the text browsers to a specific page, because the index.php of osnews is static – autogenerated every 1 minute, so we can’t have support for these devices directly on index.php – but we have a workaround. Read the Contact page.)
>Working, no link anywhere but it’s working
Are you sure that the links are not showing when you press your Menu button on your phone?
“WE HAVE Avantgo compatibility layer for many months now!”
First of all: relax.
Second: Thanks, I had no idea. Maybe I should have looked closer. Somehow I didn’t expect to find this kind of information on the “contact us” page. Though, when you think about it, it does make sense.
Anyway, thanks for the information. I probably would never have figured it out on my own.
Works great with Motorola v60g/T-Mobile. Any plans to add content than just the headlines?
>Working, no link anywhere but it’s working
Are you sure that the links are not showing when you press your Menu button on your phone?
100% sure. I have the headlines, but I cannot select any of the story to read them. The only “link” I have are the ones available under the soft keys, which leads me to “contact” and “home”.
Links are [inbrackets] under other sites such as http://linuxfr.org/wap but there’s no such thing on wap.osnews.com
Eugenia: if I browse the http://osnews.com/ site (yes, my cell support standard html) I have the links, but not on the wap site.
>I have the headlines, but I cannot select any of the story to read them
You have misunderstood …
We only offer the headlines via WAP! This is clear on our story.
As for the real HTML browser on your phone, if that phone has the OpenWave 6+ browser, we support it. Just make sure you browse to http://www.osnews.com/home.php and not to the osnews.com/ because as I explained on my previous comment, the index.php is NOT dynamic (it is static, it is auto-generating every 1 minute), so you will have to point to any other file on our site to get your browser recognized by PHP and being re-directed to the right header file that bypasses all the ads and PriceGrabber, making its browsing of OSNews on such browsers (Avantgo, UP OpenWave 6+ for phones, Lynx, Links, W3M) really “clean”.
Aaah… I wish people were reading more on the contact us page.
>Any plans to add content than just the headlines?
No, just the headlines for WAP.
The WAP is not supported equally by all phones. It is _really_ tricky to have content that will render on more than 25% of the phones globally. There are some phones that really suck on WML. This is why our WAP offering will have to stay as minimalistic as possible to ensure that at least the headlines are accessible. You might not be able to get the full stories, but at least you will get an idea of what is happening.
… on Siemens C35i
>> I took out the $ sign of the code.
Ok. Now I can get to the frontpage but there is no link to the headlines.
Your phone (depends on the phone) should have a button that opens a menu and shows the links available for each WML card or page. On some phones with bigger screens, the links are showing on the page itself, but on other phones, you will need to press a “menu” button to get the links.
It is because phone design and WML is completely on the lose and different on each vendor…
I had to choose “continue” on a menu. Normaly the links are showing on the page in my phone but not this time.
The links will show on the page if I had use the ANCOR tag. But I use the DO tag, which enables me to easier use Cards instead of pages. But on some phones, the DO is only available via a menu and not directly in the page.
I get the page now (used to get ‘malformed…’ etc) but if stops after the ‘out top 15 headlines’ part and shows no further content.
Hope that helps,
Mk, as I wrote above, check your soft menu keys on your phone. The menu to go to the next page should pop up when click the “menu” key on your phone.
does exactly what it says on the tin.