mobile
mobile
This page is a stub and would benefit from your contributions!
Mobile and microformats make for a particularly powerful combination. Microformats help users complete more tasks with fewer steps, and requiring fewer steps is especially important in mobile applications. This page lists current known mobile support of microformats, and ideas/suggestions for mobile applications that could use microformats.
mobile support
Treo
The Treo browser has good integration with the Treo address book and calendar.
- hCard support. Clicking on a "Add to Address Book" link (e.g. on Technorati's contact page) will prompt the user to add that hCard directly to their Treo address book.
- hCalendar support. Clicking on an "Add to Calendar" link (e.g. like on the events page) will prompt the user to add hCalendar events directly to their Treo calendar. (Note: the "Subscribe to" links that use
webcal:do not appear to currently work on the Treo.)
BlackBerry
No support for hCard/vCard/hCalendar/iCalendar in BlackBerry 8700, 81xx, 88xx models. Anybody have experience either way with BlackBerry 9000?
- see mobile-advocacy
iPhone
No support for hCard/vCard/hCalendar/iCalendar in first generation iPhone / Safari / Webkit. Anybody have experience either way with second generation iPhones (3G) ?
- see mobile-advocacy
mobile application thoughts
If this section gets too big, we can move it to a separate page like mobile-user-interface.
browser address book integration
Every mobile browser should auto-detect hCards and provide the user a simple/unobtrusive user interface to add them to their mobile address book.
Example: you are browsing a business site, or business listings (e.g. on Google Maps) which list business name, telephone number, address, URL etc. With a simple click or two, it should be possible to save those listings in your address book for future reference or navigation (see below).
browser calendar integration
Every mobile browser should auto-detect hCalendar events and provide the user a simple/unobtrusive user interface to add (or subscribe to) them to their mobile address book.
Example: you are browsing an event site (e.g. Upcoming.org), or event listings on a business site, and see event names, start/end times, locations, etc. With a simple click or two, it should be possible to save those events in your calendar for future reference / alarms etc.
adr and geo microformats are useful for mobile mapping and navigation applications. (from tweet: [1]).
The most obvious thing to do is extending support for geo so you can get directions to places from browsers, so you could, for example, get off the train, go to Upcoming.org on your mobile, click the address and have the mobile mapping applications walk you there. (from tweets [2], [3]).
thanks
- @bryanrieger for asking the question on Twitter.
- @markng for providing some ideas with user scenarios.