Saturday, April 22, 2006
Think about profiles and capabilities instead of devices
Some time ago we started changing the architecture of our tools and our way of thinking about the platforms we are developing for. We move from thinking about devices to start thinking about profiles and capabilities.
Our headache begins when our developments oriented to some devices need to be updated for new devices arriving to the market, and so many updates makes our tools less intuitive and more complex of using. Gradually with our old experience in systems like UAProf, we started to change our way of thinking to be more agile and making our tools more natural.
The market is creating new devices very fast and the properties of these new devices, although stable, change it values constantly. For example, Nokia decides frequently to change the 40 Series screen size, HEAP memory and the RMS. If we observe this kind of changes from all devices manufacturers, we need to update our devices data base too frequently and we haven’t time and infinite resources.
This problem move us to think in the development community and what decisions are they taking. We found that some communities oriented to J2ME like J2ME Polish , created a J2ME devices data base designed to know differences between different devices; we also found other communities like WAP developers, that have been fighting against this problem more time and basing their solutions in systems like UAProf , have developed data bases like WURFL.
This way move us to think as we did in older times with WAP problems, because at the end our objective is the same, show content in mobile devices: THINK ABOUT CAPABILITIES.
Using capabilities consists in not knowing about brands or models and things like that, better thinking about screen sizes, audio and video formats, J2ME properties, available memory, etc. Using this way, we create the profile concept, which is no more than grouping some capabilities.
Now, our content can be managed in an independent way from devices data base. Our devices data base will grow and our content will be adjusted to the new devices depending on their capabilities.
For example, if I create a “Medium-Low” profile where screen size moves from 128x128 to 128x160, supporting PNG as image format, where my HEAP limit size is 512 KB, where my JAR limit size is 125 KB and supporting MIDI as audio format, for sure that a group of devices from different manufacturers will match with this characteristics now and next year.
Our way of facing the fragmentation problem with mobile phones is thinking about profiles and capabilities. The objective of developing thinking about devices can’t be afford by small and medium companies and will be avoid in big companies in the moment they decide reducing costs.
