A road map for better mobile detection

21 Jan 2004

In a perfect world both Docomo and Vodafone et al would get together around a table and a couple of lattes later come up with a standardised system for broadcasting mobile capabilities and user preferences. Armed with this, mobile web developers would then be able to easily deliver the custom content I spend several chapters explaining in the i-Mode Developer's Guide.

Unfortunately we don't live in a perfect world and although Docomo has good documentation that includes the capabilities of all its i-mode mobiles, the mobiles themselves tell the server very little. It gets even wobblier on other platforms where how much a mobile reveals about itself is largely dependent on the particular browser it's using.

Fortunately the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recently released its Composite Capability/Preference Profiles (CC/PP): Structure and Vocabularies 1.0 Recommendation , a standard for delivering device capabilities and user preferences. Hooray!

The Open Mobile Alliance has already written a CC/PP compatible User Agent Profile (UAProf) but until Docomo chooses to use it, CC/PP will bring little relief to mobile web developers in Japan. Boohoo!