| Looking for reference reading on MMS content creation |  Search
|
|
NowSMS Support Forums ⬆ MMS & SMS Technical Discussions (unsupported) ⬆ Archive through November 12, 2008 ⬆ |
◄ ► |
| Author | Message | |||
| Martin Westin New member Username: Eimer Post Number: 1 Registered: 11-2008 |
Hi there, I was hoping that someone knew of a good resource on MMS content creation. In particular SMIL and what is supported by which phone, tricks to get "universally" compatible messages and basic things like that. When comparing to html and css that is an abundance of information on how to write documents that will work in most browsers (and versions). I have not found anything similar for MMS messages. Most of what I have found (from Nokia, SE and OMA) create as many questions that they answer. Some examples: 3GPP/SMIL vs MMS/SMIL - preference, difference? (Some phones are said to ignore the layout of MMS/SMIL but respect that of 3GPP/SMIL) SonyEricsson phones seem to center text when Nokia does the more natural left-alignment. How to fix with that? Some phones display elements in the layout order while others in the "content order". Possible related to how the smil is respected or ignored? I'd like to read up on things of this nature that affect the resulting messages. Making the MM7 and sending MMSes is taken care of and works fine. But when creating a few templates that can be chosen for an MMS I would like them to feel a bit professional. Thanks in advance. | |||
| Bryce Norwood - NowSMS Support Board Administrator Username: Bryce Post Number: 7679 Registered: 10-2002 |
Hi Martin, In the mobile world, I guess you would say that the more things change, the more they stay the same. I remember back in the early days of WAP, when we were dealing with WML, and the vastly different ways that different browsers rendered the same WML. Basically, the specifications left too much open to allow for "innovation" in the user interface. The market was too fragmented amongst the major manufacturers with no clear leader to establish a de facto standard for how particular UI elements were implemented. Almost a decade later, it sounds like you're encountering the same thing with SMIL. Back then, there were some efforts to document the differences and establish some best practices for more generic content. WURFL was always good resource ... http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/ ... I'm not sure if it has evolved into working with any SMIL issues these days, but it might be worth your looking into. At least with WML (and HTML/CSS), you could generate content differently based upon the user agent if you wanted to optimise for different clients. But with MMS, you don't really have that ability in the real world ... at least for dynamic determination. Anyway, I'm kind of rambling. Unfortunately, I don't know of any efforts for SMIL to document these issues. If you haven't already, I'd suggest checking out the MMS conformance document which you can download from the OMA: http://www.openmobilealliance.org/Technical/released_enablers.aspx The conformance document defines the baseline that different MMS clients should be following. But in the real world, there are always quirks. Hopefully someone else will chime in with some other suggestions... -bn | |||
| Martin Westin New member Username: Eimer Post Number: 2 Registered: 11-2008 |
Thanks for replying Bryce, I too dipped my toes into the WAP pool back in the good old days. MMS does have a lot in common... except that MMS is hardly a new thing these days.  I was going to try the route via official specs from OMA but since I encountered strangeness straight away in some of my very first tests (that SonyEricsson and Nokia deal with a number of things differently) I kind-of gave up on that before I started. My experience from other areas tells me that when things are this way... the best way to learn is to find som community, book or other resource where users have gathered and come to some conclusions about best practices. I'll lean more from the OMA documents and handset specs while I keep hoping for advice from some MMS guru out there. WURFL does seem to have some useful info but unfortunately many phones have different capabilities in the browser and MMS viewer. I can't take use it as a definitive guide but probably for hints on a few specific features. Thanks again. /Martin | |||
