Mobile Web Junkie

Stuck for something to do when out and about? Or maybe you’re desperate for a pizza but don’t know where to get one?

Well all these problems and more have been solved with the latest chunk to be added to Wapple Canvas.

It’s called the Bing Search Near Me chunk and is an integration with a number of technologies from those clever folk at Bing. It allows you to search for locations near to you – pizzas, restaurants, golf clubs, fitness centers – they’re all there ready to be searched for.
Read more

Previously on Wapple Canvas powered mobile sites, URLs weren’t the prettiest or most SEO friendly they could be.

Sure, you could insert text at the start of the URL and create a shortcode to identify your site, but essentially, everything was managed and displayed with pretty ugly looking variables.

But that has all changed.

We’ve introduced a new feature into Wapple Canvas called Tidy URLs that allow you to configure, at a page level, the URL that page will have.
Read more

You might have noticed, but Wapple Canvas has had a makeover just in time for summer.

Everything has had an update looks wise, we’ve improved some JavaScipt (new date picker, new colour picker) and we’ve even added a check on every page so if you’ve made changes, it’ll ask you if you want to navigate away.
Read more

We’ve made it even easier in Wapple Canvas to deliver your uploaded graphics as downloadable wallpapers.

Upload a source graphic, create a Graphic Wallpaper chunk on your page, and configure it how you want – your users will be able to view and download a perfectly sized wallpaper to their handset. And that’s every handset with any screensize!

Head over to Wapple Canvas, log in, and start uploading your wallpapers to check it out!

If you have a video uploaded to any of the likes of YouTube or Vimeo, we’ve written a new chunk for Wapple Canvas that will allow you to show it to the whole mobile world.

It’s called the Video Link chunk – login in Canvas and add one to a page to see it in action!

If it’s a YouTube video you want to show, a thumbnail is generated automatically, but for other video sharing websites, you can specify the location for an accompanying picture.

If you have an iPhone, videos will display with a play button on, allowing you to play the video with the native controls on the phone. Anything else and you get forwarded to the URL – of course when other handsets add functionality in for video playback, we’ll update the chunk!

If you want to know how to add a Video Link chunk with Architect and WAPL – check out http://wapl.info/coding-for-the-mobile-web-with-WAPL/chapter/Video-Link/ for more info.

IE6 Must Die is a trending topic on Twitter right now. The world is demanding that IE6 support is dropped, effectively forcing the hand of anyone still using the browser and hopefully freeing the internet from the hell that is substandard browser support.

Read more

We received the following comment from Jeff Miller on the ‘removing scrollbars‘ article.

“Your site doesnt even show up on any mobile phone, other than maybe an iphone. But doing a test on your site it show up very bad on other phones which most of the world use. it only scores a 3/5 on ready.mobi and its very hard to navigate on phones. Obviously you are not the mobile web junkie but the wapple (wurfl rip off hosting solution) for iphone junkie.”

Ouch. Oh well, there’s always one… The reply got kinda long but turned out to be quite a good read. So I thought it would be nice to post it as an article. Here it is: Read more

Last week something exciting happened inside the colourful walls of Wapple – the latest version of the mobile site was launched. Below are the obligatory before and after screenshots and at first glance you’ll probably notice that they look pretty similar. However, all is not as it seems because underneath the bonnet – everything has changed.

Built with Canvas

Built with Architect

Read more