Figure 7.x: Where's the beef? The first has a History List item that is 54 characters in size whereas the second's is 12 characters long.
This chapter is currently under construction.
This chapter assumes that you already know how to create a back-end script to process the user's input in a web clipping application. What this chapter will teach you are specific techniques to make the other half of web clipping a pleasant and delightful experience for the user.
The following list displays the IP Addresses used by the various web clipping servers by Palm:
This is the content-dev server that is seen by all Palm VII/Palm VIIx devices for all web clipping application requests.
This is the content-dev server that you should point to when using the Palm OS Emulator. Configure the address in the Wireless Preferences panel in the Prefs application.
Both of these IP addresses have changed, so we have listed the old IP addresses above. When using the emulator, be sure to update the IP address of the content-dev server, or you will not be able to use the emulator and web clipping applications properly.
We mentioned way back in Chapter 3 that there are differences between designing pages for your web clipping applications and designing pages that will be returned by your server. With local pages, you can afford to, within limits, splurge on the design of each page in your web clipping apps. After all, there are no charges or fees for local pages. On the server, however, the tenets stated in Chapter 3 have the utmost importance.
On server pages, you should be very concerned with the size of your HTML files, as well as the design of the page. For instance, whereas your web clipping pages may include very detailed layouts, your result pages should ideally provide just the information that the user requires.
Every page that is retrieved over-the-air will be listed in the History List pop-up menu within Clipper. The size of the History List cache is 50 KB; entries in the list are maintained on a first-in, first-out (FIFO) basis. As soon as the cache reaches its size limit, the first entry that was added to the History List is removed to make space for the next entry.
The format was adding this META tag to your result pages is as follows:
<META NAME="HistoryListText" CONTENT="X">
where X is the string that you wish to be displayed in the History List pop-up. It is important to note that the History List pop-up can only display a certain number of characters before it truncates the string. Because the History List uses a proportionally spaced font, the number of characters that you can display in the menu is on average 15 characters. As a result, you should limit the value specified in the META tag to under 15 characters if at all possible. Even though you cannot see beyond the 15 characters, the rest of the string is still being sent down to the device over-the-air.
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Figure 7.x: Where's the beef? The first has a History List item that is 54 characters in size whereas the second's is 12 characters long. |
Consider the two screenshots above. Both pages have specified their History List strings, and both, from the standpoint of the user, say the same thing. The first screenshot is 226 bytes in size, and the second weighs in at 198 bytes. The reason why the second page is noticeably smaller in size than the page on the left is because the History List item has been kept short with the page on the right. Conversely, the page on the left has a very long History List item. Thus, even though you can't see the rest of the History List item in the example on the left, the beef and fat is still there.
| Note: | There is currently no way to tell Clipper to not add a particular page to the History List pop-up menu. You could, however, write a Palm PRC to go into the History database and remove selected entries. |
If you do not include the HistoryListText META tag in your result pages, Clipper will
display whatever you placed as the title of the page in the pop-up menu. Thus, if the beginning
of your result page read:
<HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE>Search Results</TITLE> <META NAME="PalmComputingPlatform" CONTENT="TRUE"> </HEAD> ...
the corresponding item in the History List will read "Search Results". You will save a few bytes if you
don't include the HistoryListText META tag on your pages, but you will cause great confusion for the user.
Whenever they want to find a cached item, they will go to the History List and immediately be presented
with a dozen entries that look the same. You will force the user to hunt and peck for the correct
cached entry, all while cursing your web clipping application out for not being very user-friendly.
Our advice? Use the HistoryListText META tag.
The date or time are automatically appended to the end of each item in the History List. The date is displayed when the cached item is over a day old, whereas the time is displayed if the cached page is less than 24 hours old.
Figure 7.x: After a day, the time will become the day. |
There is no way to prevent the date and/or time from appearing in your History List items.
Since web clipping is being deployed on a variety of handheld devices, such as the OmniSky Palm V and the Palm VII organizer, a discussion on how device id and ZIP code is in order.