Content adaptation is the action of transforming
content to adapt to device capabilities. Content adaptation is usually related to mobile devices, which require special handling because of their limited computational power, small screen size, and constrained keyboard functionality.
Content adaptation could roughly be divided to two fields:
# Media content adaptation that adapts media files.
# Browsing content adaptation that adapts a website to mobile devices.
Browsing content adaptation
Advances in the capabilities of small, mobile devices such as
mobile phone
A mobile phone or cell phone is a portable telephone that allows users to make and receive calls over a radio frequency link while moving within a designated telephone service area, unlike fixed-location phones ( landline phones). This rad ...
s (
cell phone
A mobile phone or cell phone is a portable telephone that allows users to make and receive calls over a radio frequency link while moving within a designated telephone service area, unlike fixed-location phones ( landline phones). This radio ...
s) and
Personal Digital Assistant
A personal digital assistant (PDA) is a multi-purpose mobile device which functions as a personal information manager. Following a boom in the 1990s and 2000s, PDAs were mostly displaced by the widespread adoption of more highly capable smar ...
s have led to an explosion in the number of types of device that can now access the
Web
Web most often refers to:
* Spider web, a silken structure created by the animal
* World Wide Web or the Web, an Internet-based hypertext system
Web, WEB, or the Web may also refer to:
Computing
* WEB, a literate programming system created by ...
. Some commentators refer to the Web that can be accessed from mobile devices as the
Mobile Web
The mobile web comprises mobile browser-based World Wide Web services accessed from handheld mobile devices, such as smartphones or feature phones, through a mobile network, mobile or other wireless network.
History and development
Traditiona ...
.
The sheer number and variety of Web-enabled devices poses significant challenges for authors of websites who want to support access from mobile devices. Th
W3CDevice Independence Working Group
described many of the issues in its repor
Authoring Challenges for Device Independence
Content adaptation is one approach to a solution. Rather than requiring authors to create pages explicitly for each type of device that might request them, content adaptation transforms an author's materials automatically.
For example, content might be converted from a device-independent markup language, such as XDIME, an implementation of the W3C
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working together in ...
'
DIAL
specification, into a form suitable for the device, such as XHTML Basic, C-HTML, or WML. Similarly, a suitable device-specific CSS style sheet or a set of in-line styles might be generated from abstract style definitions. Likewise, a device specific layout might be generated from abstract layout definitions.
Once created, the device-specific materials form the response returned to the device from which the request was made.
Another way is to use the latest trend responsive design based on CSS, covered i
this
article ( RWD).
Content adaptation requires a processor that performs the selection, modification, and generation of materials to form the device-specific result. IBM's Websphere Everyplace Mobile Portal (WEMP), BEA Systems
BEA Systems, Inc. was a company that specialized in enterprise infrastructure software products, which was wholly acquired by Oracle Corporation on April 29, 2008.
History
BEA began as a software company, founded in 1995 and headquartered in ...
' WebLogic Mobility Server, Morfeo's MyMobileWeb, and Apache Cocoon are examples of such processors.
Wurfl an
WALL
are popular open source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...
tools for content adaptation. WURFL is an XML-based Device Description Repository with APIs to access the data in Java and PHP
PHP is a general-purpose scripting language geared towards web development. It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementation is now produced by the PHP Group. ...
(and other popular programming languages). WALL (Wireless Abstraction Library) lets a developer author mobile pages which look like plain HTML, but converts them to WML, C-HTML, or XHTML Mobile Profile, depending on the capabilities of the device from which the HTTP request originates.
GreasySpoon
lets the developer build plugins for content editing, in JavaScript
JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior.
Web browsers have ...
, Ruby (programming language)
Ruby is a general-purpose programming language. It was designed with an emphasis on programming productivity and simplicity. In Ruby, everything is an object (computer science), object, including primitive data types. It was developed in the mi ...
, and more, just like the Firefox application GreaseMonkey.
Alembik
(Media Transcoding Server) is a Java ( J2EE) application providing transcoding services for variety of clients and for different media types (image, audio, video, etc.). It is fully compliant with OMA'
Standard Transcoder Interface
specification and is distributed under the LGPL open source license.
In 2007, the first large scale carrier-grade deployments of content transformation, on existing mass-market handsets, with no software download required, were deployed by Vodafone
Vodafone Group Public Limited Company () is a British Multinational company, multinational telecommunications company. Its registered office and global headquarters are in Newbury, Berkshire, England. It predominantly operates Service (economic ...
in the UK and globally for Yahoo!
Yahoo (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web portal that provides the search engine Yahoo Search and related services including My Yahoo, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, y!entertainment, yahoo!life, and its a ...
oneSearch, using the Novarra Vision solution. Novarra's content adaptation solution had been used in enterprise intranet deployments as early as 2003[(1 October 2003), “Imagistics Deploys Novarra Wireless Web Server” http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-107782549.html Telephone IP News (retrieved 8 October 2009)] (at that time, the platform was named “Engines for Wireless Data”).
InfoGin
the 9-year-old content-adaptation company with customers like Vodafone, Orange, Telefónica and PCCW. The patented "Web to Mobile adaptation", Mobile Matrix Transcoder, Multimedia and Documents transcoders, Video adaptation supporte.
Launched in 2007, Bytemobile's Web Fidelity Service was another carrier-grade, commercial infrastructure solution, which provided wireless
Wireless communication (or just wireless, when the context allows) is the transfer of information (''telecommunication'') between two or more points without the use of an electrical conductor, optical fiber or other continuous guided transm ...
content adaptation to mobile subscribers on their existing mass-market handsets, with no client download required.
See also
*
Progressive enhancement
Progressive enhancement is a strategy in web design that puts emphasis on web content first, allowing everyone to access the basic content and functionality of a web page, while users with additional browser features or faster Internet access r ...
, layering technologies such that more features are added for successively more powerful clients.
*
Adaptation (computer science)
Adaptation in computer science is a process where an interactive system (adaptive system) adapts its behaviour to individual users based on information acquired about its user(s) and its environment. Adaptation is one of the three pillars of emp ...
*
jQuery Mobile or
Zepto
*
Responsive architecture is an analogous concept, applied to actual building architecture.
References
External links
Authoring Challenges for Device Independence (W3C Working Group Note)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Content Adaptation
Web development