# \[Half-OT\] PDA Clients and Rails **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [February 25, 2006, 1:18pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/half-ot-pda-clients-and-rails/73189 "2006-02-25T13:18:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Daniel\_VSSSSlkerts](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/d26b3c/32.png) [@Daniel\_VSSSSlkerts](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Daniel_VSSSSlkerts)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2006, 1:18pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/half-ot-pda-clients-and-rails/73189/1 "2006-02-25T13:18:49Z")
Hello! I’d like to gather some points about running a rails application on a PDA. As a condition I’d like to use Palm and Windows Mobile based PDA to target a huge user audience (this could be become difficult I know, only Windows Mobile for the start is although okay). I googled the last weeks and found out that there were only a few web browsers out there. E.g. Mozilla Minimo ([http://www.mozilla.com/projects/minimo/](http://www.mozilla.com/projects/minimo/)) sounds very interesting for the task. What I need: - XHTML - CSS 2 - JavaScript (for fancy AJAX stuff). So, as the framework will be rails, has any of you experience which such a environment and give me some hints? TIA, ---
**Author:** ![Daniel\_VSSSSlkerts](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/d26b3c/32.png) [@Daniel\_VSSSSlkerts](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Daniel_VSSSSlkerts)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2006, 8:21am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/half-ot-pda-clients-and-rails/73189/2 "2006-02-26T08:21:35Z")
On 2/25/06, Daniel Völkerts [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > the task. > > What I need: > > - XHTML > - CSS 2 > - JavaScript (for fancy AJAX stuff). > > So, as the framework will be rails, has any of you experience which such > a environment and give me some hints? Do you mean viewing the output of a Rails app on a PDA, or actually running the Rails application there locally, possibly disconnected from the internet? ---
**Author:** ![Daniel\_VSSSSlkerts](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/d26b3c/32.png) [@Daniel\_VSSSSlkerts](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Daniel_VSSSSlkerts)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2006, 10:25am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/half-ot-pda-clients-and-rails/73189/3 "2006-02-26T10:25:15Z")
Wilson B. schrieb: > Do you mean viewing the output of a Rails app on a PDA, or actually > running the Rails application there locally, possibly disconnected > from the internet? Sorry for my unprecises question. Of course I’d like to say that the PDA only have to view the website hosted by rails on an extra machine. The network connection will be wireless lan. So there are no changes to the rails installation (e.g. running disconnected), but I wonder if modern PDA has the capabillity of render ‘modern’ websites which contains CSS + XHTML + JavaScript (which I would use with rails). My plan is to provide one view with different CSS styles for all users. So the one is working on a client pc adjusting his settings with mouse and keyboard for easyness. Then he pull his PDA from the docking station and moved on his tour. If he had a question converning a topic he lifts his PDA and look up the part in the PDA’s webbrowser. Thanks, ---
**Author:** ![Daniel\_VSSSSlkerts](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/d26b3c/32.png) [@Daniel\_VSSSSlkerts](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Daniel_VSSSSlkerts)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2006, 5:30pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/half-ot-pda-clients-and-rails/73189/4 "2006-02-26T17:30:09Z")
On 2/26/06, Daniel Völkerts [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > So there are no changes to the rails installation (e.g. running > part in the PDA’s webbrowser. Rails is very happy in this environment, right out of the box. I work in XHTML and CSS, and usually the pages look pretty good on Windows Mobile and Blackberry systems without further modification. If PDA users are common, and you want to provide them with better support, you can define a stylesheet with the ‘mobile’ media type, and make specific changes for them. Sadly for Palm users (including myself), I’m not aware of a Palm web browser with decent Javascript support. Works fine in IE and whatever the Blackberry browser is called, though. ---
**Author:** ![Daniel\_VSSSSlkerts](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/d26b3c/32.png) [@Daniel\_VSSSSlkerts](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Daniel_VSSSSlkerts)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2006, 7:27pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/half-ot-pda-clients-and-rails/73189/5 "2006-02-27T19:27:33Z")
Hi Wilson! Wilson B. schrieb: > Rails is very happy in this environment, right out of the box. I work > in XHTML and CSS, and usually the pages look pretty good on Windows > Mobile and Blackberry systems without further modification. If PDA > users are common, and you want to provide them with better support, > you can define a stylesheet with the ‘mobile’ media type, and make > specific changes for them. I’m very, very glad to hear this. I orderer a new Dell X51 with Windows Mobile 5.0 and Wlan for testing I looking forward to start my testings. Thanks in advance for your feedback, especially for the hint with the ‘mobile’ stylesheet. In addition, how do you layout you PDA screens? As the most of the PDA have very standardized resolution, is a pixel layout better over a point,percentage oder em (I wonder what does the abbreviation ‘em’ means?) layout definition (as units in my CSS files)? > Sadly for Palm users (including myself), I’m not aware of a Palm web > browser with decent Javascript support. Works fine in IE and whatever > the Blackberry browser is called, though. My choice was know against palm users as the palm web support is not the best as you mentioned above. I’ll concentrate on Windows Mobile and Linux PDAs in the future. Greetings, ---
**Author:** ![Daniel\_VSSSSlkerts](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/d26b3c/32.png) [@Daniel\_VSSSSlkerts](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Daniel_VSSSSlkerts)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2006, 8:01pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/half-ot-pda-clients-and-rails/73189/6 "2006-02-27T20:01:13Z")
On 2/27/06, Daniel Völkerts [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > I’m very, very glad to hear this. I orderer a new Dell X51 with Windows > Mobile 5.0 and Wlan for testing I looking forward to start my testings. > > Thanks in advance for your feedback, especially for the hint with the > ‘mobile’ stylesheet. In addition, how do you layout you PDA screens? As > the most of the PDA have very standardized resolution, is a pixel layout > better over a point,percentage oder em (I wonder what does the > abbreviation ‘em’ means?) layout definition (as units in my CSS files)? If you had a very uniform set of clients, you could probably make things look very nice by specifying body widths and heights in pixels. For myself, things aren’t quite that well-defined, so I usually use relative values, percentages, etc. One nice thing about avoiding tables is that block elements you have “floated” with CSS will stack up nicely when shown on a PDA screen. Easier to see than explain, if that sentence didn’t make much sense. Heh. “em” is actually not an abbreviation, but rather a publishing term meaning “the size of a lowercase letter ‘m’”. With variable-width fonts, you can’t really talk about the size of a single character (since a period or exclamation mark will be much narrower than a capital L), so they standardized on the middle letter of the alphabet. > > Sadly for Palm users (including myself), I’m not aware of a Palm web > > browser with decent Javascript support. Works fine in IE and whatever > > the Blackberry browser is called, though. > > My choice was know against palm users as the palm web support is not the > best as you mentioned above. I’ll concentrate on Windows Mobile and > Linux PDAs in the future. Hopefully “Linux PDA” and “Palm PDA” will be synonymous in the future.