quote:

Originally posted by TonyC:
Yes thanks we had a good but quiet Xmas & New Year.

The site was already up and running on the internet and all of the occurences 1-5 happened after changing the layout from single (desktop)to combined (Desktop + Mobile). The only way I could find to get around that was to delete all of the mobile objects by right clicking the object; checking the "Exclude from Mobile Layout" option; and then replacing them by copying and pasting the required ones back into the mobile layout.

One specific example of the problem (which is still there) is on the /index page. In desktop there is a grey stripe down the left hand side of the page (obj363geo345 at x-53 and y510). On the mobile layout obj363geo345 is at x287 and y609 (even though it has been deleted from the mobile layout), if this object is deleted on the mobile page it deletes the object on the desktop even though they are in different positions. This was basically the problem with all the objects on the Mobile Layout, no matter if they were resized and repositioned if one was deleted off the mobile layout it was deleted the "original" off the desktop.

The Z order was not really a problem, rather I was just pointing out that the objects show in outline on the Mobile when in Desktop Layout and vice versa, so I found it easier to set the Z order with all the desktop objects at the back of the project and all the mobile objects at the front. As I have deleted all objects from the mobile layout and then copied and pasted objects required in the mobile I do not have any objects that are common to both layouts.

The mobile detect & redirect posted by torweb that I tried was in this post

Thanks for the information on the "class" duplication, that worked fine. I have pages that validate again; except for the /gallery.html which has a flash slide show

Harpo,

I wonder if there is any further progress on any of the above problems with the combined Moblie + Desktop option and the redirect script in SSPro.

Thanks
Tony


Thanks

Hi Tony,

We haven't gotten any farther on this yet. We've been scattered on a number of issues since Christmas. I will devote some time tommorrow to review those issues and see where we stand. I will let you know what I find.

OK, great, thanks Harpo.

Tony

Okay, I have looked into this a bit more. When I look at your example in the LeDuc project, I don’t see the same as you what describe. I see obj363 used at -53,510 in the desktop layout and not used in the mobile layout (at 287,609).

So in this case, if I unlock it, I can move or resize obj363 however I want in the Desktop layout (by changing the x and y values in the Quick Properties, Object tab or by dragging with the mouse). If I go to the Mobile tab with obj363 still selected I see the outline of where it would be, if it were set to ‘used in Mobile’, and it stays at 287,609. If I do set to ‘used in Mobile’ it becomes visible in the mobile layout and I can size or position it independent of the desktop layout.

I can then Ctrl+X in desktop layout while obj363 is selected and it disappears (leaving the outline selected). If I look in the mobile layout, it is still visible there at the same mobile position that is was at before.

If you try doing what I described above with obj363 does it not work the same for you?

If it does not, I wonder if you are somehow doing something different from what I am doing that causes you to see different results. For instance, are you viewing the desktop and mobile layouts by clicking the desktop and mobile tabs? If you were viewing them by right-clicking on the object tab and choosing ‘View as Desktop’ and ‘View as Mobile’ you would see something different because of the way the Object tab works.

If you are getting a different outcome, can you describe exactly what you are doing for one simple step. Include exactly where you are clicking and what keys you are pressing. If we can get to a point where I can duplicate what you are seeing, I am sure we can fix it.

On the topic of redirection: No decision has been made at VMI on how or when to develop code for redirection. There is definitely reason to do it but then again server side code is beyond our usual scope. There is also the question of what people’s servers will support. What happens when PHP is not available? Clientside JavaScript is not really practical because it requires a extra communication overhead from mobile browsers. Also, something to keep in mind is that all modern browsers use the media queries or media types used by SiteSpinner Pro to indicate their capabilities. So at some point (when older browsers catch up or disappear) redirection won’t be necessary at all.

In the meantime there are many free redirection solutions as you pointed out. To use one of the free solutions you might do something like this: Create standalone versions of your layouts (that is, publish as ‘Desktop Only’ and ‘Mobile Only’), perhaps in separate folders (e.g. desktop pages go in www.mydomain.com/ and mobile pages go in www.mydomain.com/mobile/). Then add the redirection as a code object that has ‘Excluded from target output’ (in the Object Editor's Options tab) set to ‘Mobile Browsers’ so that the code only appears in the desktop pages. That saves mobile users’ bandwidth. The code itself would redirect mobile browsers to the same page but at .\mobile or fall through to the desktop page. You may only need the code on the home page because once the users is in one set of pages the links will link to the same set.

Hi Harpo,

Thanks for your response and the detailed explanations.

The procedure that I used for deleting the obj363 was exactly the same as that which you are describing, but when I deleted obj363 from the mobile layout by Ctrl+X it also deleted the obj from the desktop layout as well, however when I try it now it not doing that and its working OK. All of the problems occured when I changed the layout of the project from desktop only to desktop + mobile combined and syncronised the layouts. When I deleted the unwanted objects & images from the mobile layout some were deleted from the desktop also, others were not, it was not consistant. Some text changed in the mobile layout was changed in the desktop, some was not. I solved this problem by deleting all of the mobile layout and then copying & pasting the required objects back into the mobile layout.

For the redirection it seems that I will have to do as you suggest and make a desktop only version and a mobile only version then upload them to the same URL, then try again one of the various redirect solutions. That will also solve any of the above problems at the same time.

Thanks for all your help, I will let you know how I get on.

Regards
Tony

Ok, let us know if you see it happen again and/or can reproduce it. I tried converting a single layout to dual but I couldn't reproduce those problems that way either.

If you are creating separate pages, be sure to use the desktop layout for desktop pages and the mobile layout for mobile pages (you can convert from one to the other at any time). That way you get code optimized for the situation.

There are two ways to do that. 1) Use Single Desktop layout for one page and Mobile Desktop layout for the other or 2) use Dual layout and choose the publishing format Desktop Only for one page and Mobile Only for the other.

When you use method 2, it publishes the layout that matches the publishing format. That is Desktop Only publishes from the desktop layout and Mobile Only publishes from the Mobile layout.

I'll be interested to hear how you make out with redirection. Let us know if you run into problems and need help on the SiteSpinner side. (and I'd bet LarryD has some ideas on the server side)

Harpo,

An update on the detect & redirect.

I have seperated the two layouts and uploaded them using your option 2 with torweb's redirect script as follows:

<?php
/*
SHARED LICENSE - VISIT ANDYMOORE.info
*/

function detect_mobile_device(){
// check if the user agent value claims to be windows but not windows mobile
if(stristr($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'],'windows')&&!stristr($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'],'windows ce')){
return false;
}

// check if the user agent gives away any tell tale signs it's a mobile browser

if(eregi('up.browser|up.link|windows ce|iemobile|mini|mmp|symbian|iphone|midp|wap|phone|pocket|mobile|pda|psp',$_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'])){

return true;

}

// check the http accept header to see if wap.wml or wap.xhtml support is claimed

if(stristr($_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT'],'text/vnd.wap.wml')||stristr($_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT'],'application/vnd.wap.xhtml+xml')){

return true;

}

// check if there are any tell tales signs it's a mobile device from the _server headers

if(isset($_SERVER['HTTP_X_WAP_PROFILE'])||isset($_SERVER['HTTP_PROFILE'])||isset($_SERVER['X-OperaMini-Features'])||isset($_SERVER['UA-pixels'])){

return true;

}

// build an array with the first four characters from the most common mobile user agents

$a = array('acs-','alav','alca','amoi','audi','aste','avan','benq','bird','blac','blaz','brew','cell','cldc','cmd-','dang','doco','eric','hipt','inno','ipaq','java','jigs','kddi','keji','leno','lg-c','lg-d','lg-g','lge-','maui','maxo','midp','mits','mmef','mobi','mot-','moto','mwbp','nec-','newt','noki','opwv','palm','pana','pant','pdxg','phil','play','pluc','port','prox','qtek','qwap','sage','sams','sany','sch-','sec-','send','seri','sgh-','shar','sie-','siem','smal','smar','sony','sph-','symb','t-mo','teli','tim-','tosh','tsm-','upg1','upsi','vk-v','voda','w3c ','wap-','wapa','wapi','wapp','wapr','webc','winw','winw','xda','xda-');

// check if the first four characters of the current user agent are set as a key in the array

if(isset($a[substr($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'],0,4)])){

return true;

}

}



// example 1 - detect and redirect mobile browsers

if(detect_mobile_device()){

header('Location: http://www.le-duc-gite.com/mobileindex.php');

exit;

}


?>

I tried one or two other scripts but they blocked the site opening on both the PC and the mobile.

With this script I get the site opening on the PC but on the mobile (I'm using a Nokia N70) I get a 404 error page not found.

One good point is the mobile displays the 404 error page correctly

Can you offer any help please?

Tony

This message has been edited. Last edited by: TonyC,

I can't really help with php but I do see that the site you are linking to for mobile (http://www.le-duc-gite.com/mobileindex.php)
displays a 404 error on it's own. Is it possible the page is not at that location?

Harpo,

Thanks for suggesting that, should be a capital "M" in /mobile.php. The redirect now works, but all of the images and text blocks are appearing at the same point and loading on top of one another. Any ideas of ways to correct that?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: TonyC,

I don't know how the Nokia browser works well enough to say for certain but it may be because it does not understand CSS positioning at all.

SitespinnerPro writes the code so that objects will appear as a list, in the order that they are in the workspace (from left to right, top to bottom) when CSS positioning is not understood. If is doesn't understand positioning I would guess most users expect that kind of display unless you stick to only text and let it flow freely (i.e. no CSS)

It might instead be that your images are too wide to fit in the Nokia window (which looks about 150 px wide in the emulator) and it is re-ordering them but that seems less likely.

You could do a few thing to improve the validation rating if you wanted. Like add "\>" at the end of your meta tags instead of ">" (because the mobile output is XHTML), use the UTF8 character set, take out the page transition effect and maybe the the shortcut icon.

Hi Harpo,

I don't know for sure if the Nokia understands CSS positioning, however I can access other sites like google.com and tiscali.co.uk to receive e-mails so I would have thought that it did. Also if the page is too wide for the screen a horizontal scroll bar appears and I can scroll sideways.

I tried changing the characters set to UTF8 and took out the Page transitions which made no difference at all. Then looking at the design page again I found that I had about 30 objects on the page with only 14 being used. The redundant 16 objects were there in outline only and the Edit> Clean Components told me that no components needed cleaning. I found the only way to clear these from the design screen was to find the object by scrolling though the objects and when the outline appeared to use Alt> O to bring up the object editor then "Delete> OK" then "Clean> OK" this removed the object from the Object drop down list.

Doing all this brought another peculiarity to light in that the object drop down list will no longer scroll with the mouse scroll button if the mouse pointer is not over the object drop down list box. This is also true of the Page Name Box. Previously I was always able to scroll either box from anywhere on the page as long as the relevent box was selected.

Anyway after clearing out all the unnecessary objects I uploaded the page again and accessing from the Mobile the page viewed well but without any images at all, only text. I then checked the page on this emulator using Nokia N70 and got a score of 2 out of 5, which was a start, but I got 6 errors and 1 warning.

The errors were:

• No Cache control header
  
• Image Height & Width should be in pixels
  
• Element type "meta" must be declared
  
• <meta> tag must have end tag </meta>
  
• Incorrect DOC type specified
  
• Pop up windows should not be used
  
• A note to the Image Sizes was "if either width or height is less than the intrinsic width or height, then this test will FAIL"

The warning was:

• Access keys were not used
  
• (Providing an access key (keyboard shortcut) with a link gives the user a convenient way to access the link)

I tried correcting some of these errors but failed except for the pop up windows, however this moved the score up to 3. I Don't know if these errors could be corrected when SSPro is next updated.

I reduced the number of images to 2 and found that one displayed the other didn't, played around with various combinations but without success. I uploaded the re-direct script again and now I see the following warning when the index page is viewed:

• Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/sites/vip1226886/httpd/htdocs/index.php:204) in /home/sites/vip1226886/httpd/htdocs/index.php on line 1842

I don't think it's going to be an easy ride for non programmers like myself to produce a website for desktop and mobile.

The bottom line is: I have just changed the layout back to Single Layout - Desktop.

Wow!! I now get double images of some objects offset on the pages, Looks like I've to start deleting and cleaning again.

If anybody has better luck than me can you let me know how you do it please?

Tony

This message has been edited. Last edited by: TonyC,

Oh No!! I also saved a seperate project for the mobile layout under a new name, problems with this also; when I lasso some objects to move them as soon as the left mouse button is released the group shoots up to the top left hand corner of the design page nearly out of sight. This happens with any objects that are lassoed.

I have saved the two problem .ims files in a seperate folder (original project made into two projects "Single Layout: Desktop" and "Single Layout: Mobile"), should you want to look at them.

IMO there must be some problems with the Combined Laytout. In "Layout Options" it says "You can change layout types at any time" I certainly can't swap from one layout to the other without having to do a lot of deleting and cleaning afterwards and then I don't know what would happen if I changed it back again.
I don't think I'm going to try

Tony

Hi Tony,

Yes, I would like to look at those ims files (where grouping moved the objects). Can you post a link to them? Or send them to vmsupport (@vitualmechanics.com). Put “TonyC - Mobile layout” in the subject line.


Re - extra objects (30 objects on the page with only 14 being used)

That sounds normal. Let me describe how it is supposed to work and you let me know if that is not what is happening.

When you add an object a layout, by default it is visible only in that layout. You view the objects in a layout by selecting its respective layout tab. You can add or remove the object from any of the layouts by using the Layout tab in the Quick Properties editor or by right-clicking the object and checking or un-checking ‘Exclude from … Layout’ You can also remove the object from one or the other layouts or from both, by cutting or deleting from the layout tabs.

But … even if you remove the object from both layouts, it is still considered as part of the page. So ‘clean components’ will not remove it. To remove an object from the page completely, you should go to the object tab and remove it there.

The object tab shows a list of all the objects used on a page. The list is independent of any layout it may be used on. If you right click on the object tab itself, you can change how the list of objects is displayed. You can show all objects at their desktop layout positions, at their mobile layout positions, or as the default vertical list of objects. In addition, you can chose which objects are displayed. By default all objects from both layouts are displayed but you can hide objects that are only visible in one or the other (and other combinations).

When you add an object to the objects tab, you are adding it to the page. By default it is visible in both layouts.

While you are in the Object tab you can do things to object positioning that will affect both layouts. For example, change the size of an object (as opposed to the scale) or rotate an object.

Now… when you select Single Desktop or Single Mobile you will see a single design tab, That tab is a combination of the dual layout’s object tab and the layout tab. That is, it will show all the objects on a page, allow you to lay them out, and also let you rotate, etc. and add or delete them from the page.

If you go from the dual layout mode to one of the single modes, you will find that all objects will be visible, even if there were not visible in dual mode. That is because they are part of the page even if they were hidden in the layouts. You can decide at that point whether you want to delete them or just reposition them.


Re - the validation errors:

Are you using Single Mobile layout in version 2.91? If you are, some of the errors you see should not be there (unless you are adding them in your own code). The errors that Single Mobile addresses are:
No Cache control header,
<meta> tag must have end tag </meta>
Incorrect DOC type specified

If you still get those any of those errors, and they are in SiteSpinner code, give me a link and I will take a look.

The warning ‘Access keys were not used’ can be corrected by adding Access keys (these are single characters that the user can press to activate a link. E.g pressing ‘H’ to go to the home page. ) You add them in the link editor’s ‘Key’ field (beside the ‘Title’ field).

For the error ‘Pop up windows should not be used’, I assume that you are using popups and that removing those will remove the error. If that is not the case, I will take a look.

For the warning ‘Image Height & Width should be in pixels’. We use 'em' sizing right now because it is more scalable but we are considering adding ‘pixels sizing’ as an option in Single Mobile.

The error “Warning: Cannot modify header information …” is a php error that probably means you have added some html (or php has output some html) before the redirection takes place. You can’t do that. Check that you redirection code is the first thing on you page.

I hope that clarifies things a bit.

Hi Harpo,

OK, thanks for all that information.

I have sent the two .ims files by e-mail for you to have a look at.

What you describe about the objects is what is happening so that's not a problem, however what do you mean by

quote:

To remove an object from the page completely, you should go to the object tab and remove it there.

Do you mean the "Object" in the top Menu Bar, (Alt+O) if so I don't see how to right click on an "Object Tab" to get the options that you mention although I am using Alt+O to remove objects. In my project the Objects listed in the Object Editor are not just from the selected page but from all of the pages and the number of objects left on the page after changing from combined layout to single mobile layout make it an impractical job to delete the unwanted objects. IMO, for a small project like this, it would be easier to start again.

Re Validation errors:

Version:
I am using version 2.91 and still getting the errors in the emulator as mentioned; I think you should be able to look at that in the .ims files I've sent you.

Pop ups:
I think I said in the last post that I had removed the pop ups and that had increased the score to 3.

Access Keys:
OK I see where I can enter those, thank you.

Image Height Width:
Is it possible to change the "em" to pixels?

Cannot modify header information:
I believe that this is being caused by the redirection script, which I have tried placing "above all" "in header" "above body" "in body" and the only place it seemed to work was "in body", however the last time I tried in all four and it wouldn't redirect at all... that was when I gave up.

I will have another go with a single mobile layout now that I have seperated the two projects and see how I get on.

Thanks for all your help so far.

Tony

This message has been edited. Last edited by: TonyC,

Ok, I have the file that you sent. I see the grouping problem. There is something wrong there. I will have to look into it to see what is going on.

Re -To remove an object from the page completely, you should go to the object tab and remove it there.

I meant click on the tab, just above the workspace, named 'Object' next to 'Desktop' and 'Mobile',to the left of the 'Layout Options' button. This displays a list of objects in the workspace. (This is only in Dual mode. In the Single modes the 'Design' tab lets you delete objects completely from the page) Clicking Alt+O on a selected object and then clicking the delete button in the Object Editor that pops up should also work (in any tab). If you were doing that you should not see the object again. If you are seeing that object again, describe to me what I need to do to see that happening. Then I can tell you what is going on.

Re -Is it possible to change the "em" to pixels?

Not within SiteSpinner, at this time. (but you should still be able to get a good score without that)

When I publish your Mobileindex page, I can get an overall score of 5 (total score of 4.86 out 5) if I correct the code in the header for XHTML .( i.e.“/>”tag termination instead of “>” and “meta” instead of “META”.) and use UTF8 (you may have already been used that)

It would be higher if you added access keys. Of course I dont have your images so there may be a size penalty if the image files are included (there may not be either)

OK, Thanks for explaining the Object Tag, I was looking for it on a single layout page. I will try that and see how I get on.

Grouping Problem: I notice that this still happened with some (not all) additional objects that are added. I don't know if that is relevent.

That was a good score on ready.mobi so I have to persevere, but I still have the problem of re-direct to solve.

Tony

Thanks, we should have all we need to investigate the grouping problem.

If you are still using torweb's redirect, it should be placed as code 'Above All'. That way the redirection occurs before any of the page HTML is sent. If you don't do that you will get the error "Warning: Cannot modify header information ... you have added some html... before the redirection takes place".

I just tried it that way and it works. It redirects iphones too (at least the one I tried.)

OK I'll give it a try again. Last time I tried it the Main Index page refused to load at all in the PC. Are you getting any picture displaying?

I'm also having trouble with the code for XHTML, I tried this:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//WAPFORUM//DTD XHTML Mobile 1.0//EN" "http://www.wapforum.org/DTD/xhtml-mobile10.dtd">

and the score dropped to 1 and I still had the error.

Also I'm still getting the error "No Cache control" which I think you said had been resolved in 2.91

Sorry to be such a nuisance with this.

Tony

Hmmm... I am not sure what you are doing. I looked and www.le-duc-gite.com/ for index.php and Mobileindex.php but neither seems to have the redirection.

This is how I would do it:

Assuming index.php is the desktop page and Mobileindex.php is the mobile page, index.php would be published as a 'Single Desktop' layout and Mobileindex.php would be published as a 'Single Mobile' layout.

You would put the complete redirection code (that is, starting with <? php and ending with ?>) in a code object 'Above All' in index.php.

The php code in index.php basically says:
If a mobile browser is detected, go to Mobileindex.php
Otherwise, just continue sending the index.php page.

The 'Single Desktop' pages are published in HTML not XHTML (for wider browser acceptance) so no other changes are need in index.php.

'Single Mobile' pages are published in XHTML so any HTML code that you added to Mobileindex yourself should be adjusted to conform with XHTML. As I mentioned before, the only places that I saw where that was needed in Mobileindex was in the header code. There you need to change META to meta and end the meta and link tags with '/>'. Also, you should use the UTF8 character set if you are not already.

You can add access key characters if they make sense in your case and/or if you want to increase the validation score.

That is all you should need to do. 'Single Mobile' will include a cache control statement on its own (but you can add your own cache control statement in the header if you want more control. You should not need to add any DOCTYPE statments.

Try that and let me know how you make out.

Harpo, I had taken out the redirect script because it was stopping the site opening on a PC.

I have added it again and the main site /index.php is now loading OK on the PC. On /Mobileindex.php I have corrected the META to meta and the meta and link tag endings to '/>' and made sure that I had used UTF8 character set and also added access keys, although they don't work at present.

The redirection now works but the links to go to other pages don't and with the following 5 errors:

1) Document Type passed but does not validate
2) Valid markup - Content is not allowed in prolog
3) Caching - No cache-control or expires headers detected
4) Specify Image sizes ( I know that we can't fix this)
5) Page Size limit (I can live with that)

Sorry to keep on with this but I would really like to get it working.

BTW I changed the desktop part of the project to dual layout to use the object tab to remove any unnecessary objects and it screwed up the layout on some of the pages, luckily I was able to close the project without saving the changes and revert back to the original.

Thanks
Tony