Hi, My Name is Luca Passani and I manage the WURFL open-source project (http://wurfl.sourceforge.net).

Here is a Nokia 6288 on the vodafone UK network:

user-agent = Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.7) Gecko/20060909 Firefox/1.5.0.7 MG (Novarra-Vision/6.1)
accept = text/html;q=1.0, text/css; q=1.0, application/x-javascript; q=1.0, text/plain;q=0.8, application/xhtml+xml;q=0.6, application/x-httpd-php;q=0.1, */*;q=0, image/gif; q=1.0, image/jpeg; q=1.0, image/png; q=1.0
accept-charset = ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
accept-language = en
accept-encoding = identity;q=1.0, gzip;q=0.1, *;q=0
x-novarra-device-type = 0
x-device-user-agent = Nokia6288/2.0 (05.94) Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1
x-mobile-gateway = Novarra-Vision/6.1 (VF-UK; Server-Only)
via = HTTP/1.1 glgwsl11 (XMG 724Solutions HTG XMG-31_VODAFONE_M3_B030 20070724.091400), 1.1 Novarra (Vision/6.1), 1.1 frankenstein1:3128 (squid/2.6.STABLE9-20070214)
cache-control = max-age=259200
connection = keep-alive

How bad is this? this isn't even a Symbian phone. It's a Nokia series 40! How can you disguise this as a desktop browser?

Also, what happened to the UAprof header? that was introduced by OMA (i.e. operators and device manufacturers) explicitly to allow operators and content owners to customize their content to device capabilities. You new gateway simply removes all of that. This is an abuse. I bought my phone so that I could go to site that can send me content for my phone! what Vodafone is doing is either illegal or it SHOULD be.

What would you do if your ADSL provider was turning your HTTP requests to look like Netscape 4? you would probably change ADSL provider. Unfortunately, changing operator is not nearly a simple (too many other services that come with one's subscriptions) yet, one can only point out the arrogance.

finally, let me provide my perspective as a end-user. I may be OK going to a reformatting service for this or that site, BUT generally speaking reformatted websites are mostly unusable on feature phones, so I do not understand how you can force this on all of your users without their permission.

Dear vodafone, this is not what I call being an advanced mobile internet provider, this is about Novarra bamboozling vodafone into believing that there are shortcut to the mobile internet.

Luca

for the record, I do not have a standard background. I did try to work with W3C, but the way standard bodies work did not leave me too happy.
You can refer to this for details:

http://www.passani.it/gap/intro.htm

which is the background to my GAP document, which tries to give developers the right message, something that what W3C has egregiously failed to do:

http://www.passani.it/gap/

To make a long story short, it is my opinion that mixing web and mobile internet only means making mobile development even more complicated than it already is.

Anyway, I am not here to talk about me. I am here to bring my contribution and help the industry turning the mobile internet into a developer platform. Vodafone's initiatives goes into the opposite direction. *You are fragmenting the platform*.

So, you say that the comments so far are very positive. Really? you must have heard different comments than the ones I heard, because the ones I heard are very negative, and I am referring to comments from everyone I talked to, including developers, bloggers and, hear hear, people from vodafone too. Can you point to one of your positive comments? I am curious...

> Other Global companies are driving forward with
> Content Adaptation solutions with a similar mission

yeah, it's one of the many trends in the industry, but it's pretty much failing everywhere. Your regular user does not care about hitting the web with a feature phone. Too slow. Too hard to use. Can't be bothered.

Best Regards

Luca

Quoting: "I am monitoring the customer usage of the service and I can tell you firmly that your statement is not the case. Customers do want to use the WWW internet and daily usage and customer volumes are increasing."


Brian, Vodafone associated the launch of the adaptation framework with the one-pound per 5Megs offer, which explains the positive response by the customer.
The day you measure the popularity of sites built specifically for mobile vs generic adapted web sites AND the same cheap billing for data traffic, you will see mobile sites win hadns-down. That's assuming Vodafone has allowed developers the possibility to build mobile sites (i.e. recognize the device through the user-agent string).

Luca

"We are open for suggestions in working with both web and mobile specific content.
To date we haven't had any detailed suggestions from this forum on the handling of both.
I would like this threaded discussion to move to a proactive discussion to options where mobile and web content work in harmony and not get stuck in the past of working solely with mobile specific content. That era has gone."

Brian, now you are being unfair here. The suggestion has been there, very clear and very simple for you guys to implement. Let the user-agent string alone!!! it is not yours, it's never been and you have no right to change it while it travel from people's phone to developers' services. It's a theft!

The user-agent string is what developers need to provide superior user experience in their site. The message from developers is loud and clear. DO NOT TOUCH the USER-AGENT STRING!

When you say "working solely with mobile specific content" you are offending our intelligence, because Vodafone behavior is enforcing mobile adaptation *solely* and not anything else. You won't get away with this so easily by playing with words.

This is a constructive, unambiguous message you are receiving from developers around the world. Trying to change the subject won't fool anyone. You and Vodafone are guilty of arrogant and abusive behavior.


Luca Passani

Hi Mark

Thanks for your comments.

Since the launch of the "Mobile Internet" it hasn't been Vodafone's intention to stop of block any mobile site.

This is why the whitelist was created to allow for mobile site access.

Vodafone live! remains as a Premium mobile content offering with Vodafone partners.

Customers can now go off portal which is something I personally have wanted as a customer to do for many years now and many others are now enjoying too.

We are open for suggestions in working with both web and mobile specific content.

To date we haven't had any detailed suggestions from this forum on the handling of both.

I would like this threaded discussion to move to a proactive discussion to options where mobile and web content work in harmony and not get stuck in the past of working solely with mobile specific content. That era has gone.

I welcome any technical suggestions that others have that can be debated or discussed as either features or suggestions for the standards forums.

BR
Brian

Hi Atrasatti

Many thanks for your suggestions.

This is the type of debate I would like here where you are proposing solutions in a world where mobile , web content and adaptation proxies co-exist. This is the new environment we are in.

Not quite sure what you meant by KHTML? Was that a typo?

I'll pass your suggestion on internally.

Good stuff.

BR
Brian

Andrea

Ok thanks for the link .On the topic of your comment.

"SUPPORT the idea that Vodafone (or any other network operator) provides a tool such as this adapting proxy, but the user should be able to say "I want to use" or "Thank you, no". As of today, you can avoid the proxy using a different APN that we all know it too complex for most users.

This is built into the service already. The user has the choice at service start-up to "allow Vodafone to adapt sites" "Not allow Vodafone" to adapt sites when they start the service. They can also change their settings under "Web Preferences".

They can also at any time select "Unmodified" at the bottom footer of any web page and get the unmodifed page and by the way this allows the user agent header to be passed. For example go to the www.bbc.co.uk brings the HTML back (Rendered) and if you select Unmod you get the mobile version of the site as the user agent is passed through.If there is no mobile version of the site the full HTML comes back and it is up to the phone to cope with that.

BR
Brian

Hi

This is customer choice . Web preferences is located on the main WWW page where you enter your URL .It also also features in "My Account". If the user goes to they can checkbox either

-Adapt non-mobile friendly sites
-Do not adapt any sites

If a customer selects "Do not adapt any site" the full html or wml will come through. They can save this option permanently.

This is customer choice. If the customer wants to go to the full html BBC page they can go and they do go in volumes today.

If they choose "Do not adapt any sites" they may get the mobile version or they may get the full html which may fill up their mobile phone cache and present a white screen.

Also when the customer first signs up they are asked if they want Vodafone to Adapt or Leave untouched web sites.

So there are three areas where the customer can choose what they want from the system. Four actually if they discover that clicking Unmod provides the unrendered version.

There is a point of view that a segment of customers want to go the HTML site rather than the wireless site of certain sites. This is particularly the case with social networking sites.

BR
Brian

Hi David

I have forwarded your domains to the whitelist. I will correctand remove my incorrect blog on the site as the anchor (whitelist@vodafone.com) is linked to mobileinternet.whitelist@vodafone.com.

The web pages on MICS point to the right email address.

I copy/pasted the original link from the web pages. My apologies for that.

mobileinternet.whitelist@vodafone.com is the correct email address for whitelisted submissions. This has been communicated before.

BR
Brian

Yes is the short answer.

Whitelisted URLs have the user agent passed as a default.

Here is a summary of scenarios discussed on threads

1) If the domains are on the whitelist = user agent passthrough.

2) Customer selects on first time start up "I do not want Vodafone to adapt sites" = User agent passthrough all of the time.

3) Whilst at any web page at any time the user selects on the footer "Unmod" =Unmodified =User agent passthrough = present wml should it be supported . The BBC page is a good example where the HTML is rendered then they select Unmod and the bbc mobile service is presented.

BR
Brian

@ Brian.

Can you or someone else answer the question above?

Brian,

while it is nice that you let your users decide on that, it is also ashame that you don't let websites decide what kind of content they should spit out.

I do understand the motivations behind a reformatting proxy (I also work for an operator) and it is a great service (from what I hear) that people can browse web-sites which are not mobile-friendly with their handsets. I don't know how good it works though, as I can not test it myself.

However, I do not understand why do you have to hide the real User-Agent of the requesting device? As Luca, Andrea and others mentioned, there are different ways to express whatever you need to express. You can use some of the existing HTTP headers or you can "invent" new headers (X-Vodafone-Proxy for instance) if you need to pass some special information along.

Device detection without the UA is currently not possible (for external websites), so it is a crucial component for that.

I would expand on Andrea's comment above:
1) first, leave the UA alone
2) add whatever you feel you need to add (maybe you can also transcode video or images on the fly, so you add a few "Accepts" header values as well)
3) Forward a request to the target website
4) Depending on the response content type, you can decide:
a) leave it alone (XHTML-MP, WML...)
b) HTML 3.2 transcode it (and provide the "original" link in the footer

Option b) seems feasible, but when you take into account that Windows Mobile devices often use HTML3.2 markup (although most of them support XHTML-MP), it does not make much sense, does it? So, building on that, you can monitor when the users click on "original" link. When <insert_number_here> users click on original link, meaning that they want to see the original, the site gets automatically white listed, so the content is not transcoded by default.

That way, you can transcode web pages and most of the mobile sites will be whitelisted on first request ("mobile" content type on a HTTP response) and others could get whitelisted afterwards.

So, IMHO, you should leave the UA intact.

Regards,
Miha.

Hi Voda

Why does our company spend thousands on mobile Voda advertising only to find out recently the conversion rate collapses on Voda. Voda customers don't buy much anymore.

Why did our company spend many thousands on handset detection so we can... send the correct video format to the user when they buy one...send the correct java application for their handset without having to know and choose their handset model...format text message length to cope with one or two text messages if phones don't do it themselves...send the correct video tone for the handset...ensure the customer gets the correct music download length if their handset can't cope with large downloads...deal with network connection drop outs and allow the customer to reconnect and recommence downloads...understand the payment facilities available to a customer and only offer them ones that are appropriate...welcome them to sites and give them content that is appropriate to their handset and content they can actually use...

Do I need to go on?

Commercially we have to consider very carefully if we should throw away any investment/work undertaken on detection services.

These are issues that REALLY affect companies that rely on header information. These issues put in jeopardy levels of owner investment in our company, putting pressure on obtaining further investment. In turn it could affect our company future direction.

So not only are our customers getting a poor experience on Voda but our revenues are affected, our future investment may be affected, but certainly our advertising on Voda is affected and our risk has gone up.

So much for relying on standards.

Readers of this thread may be interested in the work of the W3C Mobile Web Initiative Best Practices Working Group's Content Transformation Task Force - which Brian alludes to in an earlier reply.

We have created a draft "Problem Statement" in which we try to explain the issues we are trying to address. We'd welcome (constructive) comments on the present draft which we'd like to complete in the next few weeks. Comments should be sent to the Content Transformation Mailing List, which is archived.

Thanks
Jo

(Standards Director, dotMobi)

Luca -- If you are so interested in this workstream and its outcome, there is nothing stopping you from participating in it. The work is happening in public and like all W3C work is subject to stringent requirements regarding public comments. You could also encourage your employer to join W3C and put you forward as a member of the working group in order to participate in this workstream. As working group chair, I would welcome your constructive participation.

Hi Dave -- totally agree with your points. The problem is that there is a conflicting requirement of trying to make Web sites that do not adapt based on user agent string usable via mobile browsers. We recognize that there is a problem with the solution currently in place which is why all this public outreach is happening right now, including this forum and the W3C task force. I think this is a positive step towards community engagement, but this also represents a culture shift for Vodafone and culture shifts don't happen over night. Please bear with us. Vodafone is listening.

Thanks,
Dan

Dan or Brian,

what is the rationale behind masking the User-Agent header? Couldn't you have done the adaptation if you left the UA alone?

Do you modify other headers as well?

Thanks,
Miha.

I have joined this conversation late but I have had conversations with Google, a client of ours, and participated in several technical discussions with them, they were emphatic that their recent decision to DROP manipulation of content, user-agent, etc. was the right one - they said they had listened to the developer community and conducted a lot of research into the impact of what they were doing.

As a channel for our content, some of which is even Vodafone branded advertising, do you not think you have an obligation to ensure that the content we produce is as close as possible to the content the user ends up with? How can we produce and tailor our content for individual handset capabilities without control of issues like this? Losing the user-agent string has an immediate impact on work we're doing, I don't want to return to the old 'do you have flash' splash screen days, it seems like a daft step back to me. By all means shrink your images, etc. but I don't understand why the user-agent has to be hidden...

By your definition, if a site is rejecting mobile requests because they don't recognize the user agent, then they don't really care about adapting to mobile devices don't they? They do this perhaps for a reason. Perhaps their site is flash only? Perhaps their site employs elaborate AJAX? In these cases no amount of transcoding will help, and faking as a desktop browser is going to cause them to return the flash/AJAX content. How do you transcode that to fit into a small screen?

Changing the User-Agent for this corner case while messing up with all the other, more legitimate cases seems completely backwards to me.

What's the default behavior? because you see, 95% or more of the users will have no idea of what adaptation is and what the network is doing behind their back.

So, if users get novarra enabled by default, and they need to opt-out to get a normal experience, then your posting is just an attempt to play a dirty game...you want to convince us that vodafone is in good faith.

I am afraid you are underestimating developers' intelligence in this case...

Luca

No, Brian. This is just an excuse, but it does not old water when confronted with reality.

If a website does not offer a mobile version, you can request the content with a UA String that reads "Hi, I am Biran from Vodafone UK", and you will still get content you can reformat.

Changing the UA only be explained if the logic is "some sites also have a mobile version, but Vodafone does not like that because we know better". This is arrogant and short-sighted.

While you may reap an immediate advantage by getting a few sites to serve web content and not a mobile optimized experience, you are going a long way in damaging the mobile web as a development platform for pretty much everyone else. This affects the mobile industry negatively in general.
Not by chance people from other parts of the vodafone organization are embarassed, and even the editor of the content reformatting task force (which you referred to) is admitting that messing with the US is a bad idea.

So, I really think you should talk to your boss and let them know that messing with the UA string was not a wise move...

Luca

Hi guys!

I completely agree with Luca's (and others) point of view.

User-Agent string is the thing on which we rely for our technology.
There's no need to change the UA string.

Why didn't you add an own header for adding the info YOU need? You just add your own header, and use it, without expecting every developer to change their code, having ugly IF sentences to handle this only case.

We need standards.

Mobile development is already very complicated to complicate it even more.

What happens if tomorrow another carrier does another thing like that, other day another one does another thing, etc?? We would have to modify our apps, with unmaintainable ugly conditions that are carrier-specific!

UA should not be touched, you can have the same results using your own header.

It's good that you let your users choose, but as Luca stated, 95% of users don't know what you're talking about, and will never change their conf!!! Users don't know how to configure their cellphones, they don't know what is HTML, xHTML, WAP, GPRS, Wap Push or whatever. And we also know people don't read the legal notices, etc. They should, but they don't. So first they won't know about it happening, and if they care to read it, they won't undesrtand a thing about what you are talking.

So please, be nice, and get the UA string back to what it is meant for, and use your own one for your needs.

Thanks.

Juan