W3C Link Checker for Mobile

Finding no mobile link checkers I extended the W3C link checker to do the job. For security reasons you should go to the official site and alter the Perl script manually, but for the trusting the edited script can be downloaded here (I’ve also removed the 1 page per second limit).

To extend checklink for mobile user agents, add a new line to line 1307 of the checklink code containing:

$request->header('User-Agent', 'Mobile');

To run this link checker across your entire site you’ll need to run it recursively (using -r), I run the script using (For -S0 to work you’ll need to alter the script again):

checklink-m -Hbrq -S0 http://stripeylines.com > release-12.2.m.html

Future Work

Ideally, the checklink script would be extended and the user-agent passes as a parameter (permitting both PC and mobile site checking). If anyone wishes to take this further I’d be interested in the end result. If I have no responses in the following weeks I’ll contact W3C with my suggestions.

Whilst developing the mobile optimized version for our iPhone app, StripeyLines, I discovered that our site (such as our login page) needed some tweaking. These were:

1. Stopping auto capitalision on some text input fields (such as usernames)
2. Selecting a suitable keyboard

Autocapitalisation

Auto-capitalisation is supposedly to help users using Apple’s mobile Safari. You don’t want this on any case sensitive fields like: username, userId. To remove apply propriety html to each tag:
<input autocorrect="off"
autocapitalize="off" class="text-field" type="email" name="j_username"
value="">

Nasty eh? It doesn’t appear like this Apple plan to standardise this method. It’s a presentation level, mobile specific style – why isn’t this in CSS? For mobile CSS Apple are following the standards route – why not on this? All their new mobile specific CSS (those ones starting with -webkit) are typically being proposed for future CSS versions.

For more info, on these tags and form designing, see Apple Dev Docs.

Selecting Keyboards

We all know user-names which are email addresses are a good idea (except affiliatewindow.com – shame!). To show an email keyboard, more custom HTML is required. This time Apple has extended the input type to contain the ‘email’ field.

<input type="email" />

To select other keyboards see the Apple Coding How to – documentation, anyone?

Integrating these into the Spring Web Framework

Next week, I’ll take you on the adventure of integrating these tags into the Spring Web Framework.