:: Time for I-mode ::

 

It's a small step, from the web to wireless these days.

Like the internet, I-mode is fun, exciting and interesting.

Why shouldn't everybody have an i-mode site?

For those of you that want to build one, a tutorial on how to build your own i-mode site.

:: < ------------------ > ::

O.K., an i-mode website, let's start at the beginning.:

- you don't need any extra facilities, just make a new directory
for this site on an existing weblocation
(for my new i-mode site, i will use: http://www.corrine.nl/imode/ )

- you can start building directly, no extra tools or scripts needed, to start with.

- Just start making the pages, upload them to your new imode-directory,
and announce your website at i-mode portals. That's it.

 

:: < ------------------ > ::

We are going to make a standard i-mode site that can be viewed everywhere.

At the moment I-mode sites are made in C-HTML, based on HTML, extended with special tags for phones.

In 2003 this will be extended and Java-applications will run also on I-mode phones. I hope to get into that, also.

For now a simpel i-mode site will do. Since i found no editor i like yet, i will start working in Windows Notepad.

While building it, you can test your i-mode site in your browser, offline but preferably on the internet.

If you want to see it in your i-mode phone, off course you can type the URL and go there,
or when you don't have a i-mode phone yet go to i-mode simulator. I recommend the WAPAG website for
this. At this moment you can check you page in the Nec and the Toshiba there.

:: < ------------------ > ::

 

O.k, we are getting started, i will not explain the HTML-tags here because i presume you have seen something of that already.

If you getting tired of reading, you can start playing around with the tutorialfiles (link in the menu) or you can start gradually building you knowledge by following me building my own i-mode site, here.

:: < ------------------ > ::

In the first example we will make a basic i-mode page, with only text.
The only difference with a basic html-tag is that the following tag is added: "META name="CHTML" content="yes"'. This tag will explain to search-engines that this is a i-mode site.

:: < ------------------ > ::

 

We are making a site for a mobile device, so we will be able to make use of the numeric keys 0-9 to go to a link.

In this second example we can use the numeric key 0 to go back to the main examples page.
By adding the attribute 'accesskey="0"' to the link-tag, this is easily done.

Note: in the browser this works the same as a normal hyperlink, no key-activation possible.

(Look at the source of the example in the browser)

:: < ------------------ > ::

At this moment i would like the introduce the emoji-characters you can use in an i-mode site.

Emoji is a special character to refine you i-mode site. There are a lot of them.

For instance the emoji-character for a small non-smoking sign = 59008


(see also code of example 3.)


For this file i'm using the same text as with the previous example, but the emoji is used to explaine to the user that he/she has to access the 0-key.

(this '0' is not visible in the browser, which is unable to translate emoji's)

:: < ------------------ > ::

You can see more emojis in example 4.

Note: only visible in your i-mode phone.

:: < ------------------ > ::