Re: handhelds (was:Strict DTD a new twist)

At 12:02 PM 1/7/01 -0600, Tamara Abbey wrote:
>Folks,
>
>I think these little devices are going to take off (and I own one now too, 
>mainly for the novelty).

This is probably way way off topic, but heck, that never stopped me before
. . .

Why do you think they will take off?

>
>But, we won't see *websites* on them. What will happen is the same thing 
>that has happened all along. These things will evolve.

Please, argue with me if I'm wrong here, but it sounds like the evolving
needs to happen to the screen on that little gizmo. I see the potential for
that evolution as extremely limited.

>
>Just as direct marketing went from telephone sales and mailboxes to direct 
>marketing dot com with HTML, we'll have direct marketing on these cell 
>phones and PDAs but with WML.


Yes, you are probably right. But if there is ANYTHING this planet needs to
get together and outlaw - direct marketing in this manner is it. To heck
with world peace, let's nuke the spam mongers.

>
>And, just as you can not stuff a 6-page flyer onto a browser window, the 
>content will be modified to fit the delivery method.

Not with HTML it won't. It is my opinion that given the nature of the
graphic/sound/JavaScript enhanced pages of today, that would be a
completely unreasonable expectation to place on a static HTML file.


>
>So, we'll get direct marketing in our mailboxes, on the phone during 
>dinner, on our desktops and on our cell phones/pda's.

Grrrrrrrrrrrr. I'll bet the farm you are right about that. I'd give my left
. . . well, you know . . . for you to be wrong, but I'm very confident you
are not.

>
>As far as what to tell clients, then they should understand this is a *new* 
>medium and it will cost them.
>

That makes sense too. The *problem* (and I'll just bet it is a big one) is
when they start getting complaints about their pages being broken - when
they are not. I'm working on the assumption that these devises are going to
navigate the same way we do with web browsers: URLs.

I can see it now. Have you ever been to one of those framed sites some numb
nuts built and didn't include no frames content, on a browser that does not
support frames?

The page:

"This pages uses HTML. You can not see it. Click HERE to get a real web
browser."

I'm chuckling about the mental picture of a 70 MB MSIE 6.X browser being
downloaded to a PDA with 8 MB of memory to keep myself from crying.

Yea, that is going to make for happy customers and even happier clients.
Especially when they have to scroll their 1.5 inch screen down to see all
three sentences.


>But, that's just my opinion.

Me too - strictly my opinion.
Fuzzy
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