Creating a mobile site with Yahoo! Blueprint by Justin Hartman

Posted on February 12, 2009 - by Justin Hartman

Creating a mobile site with Yahoo! Blueprint

Yahoo! Blueprint, in theory, is an amazing and agile mobile development framework. Yahoo! describes Blueprint as…

…a platform for developing and distributing rich mobile Internet services. It offers a standards-based language, an easy-to-use toolkit, innovative features, and support across multiple runtime environments—allowing developers to maximize their reach across thousands of mobile devices.

When we first came across Blueprint at Afrigator we got really excited about the possibilities. Here you can develop a mobile site in a standard XML format and by integrating your mobile application into Blueprint it would interpret the markup, detect the mobile phone a user is on and in turn render an optimised mobile version tailored just for their device.

Well not really! To test it out I created a very simple mobile application that will return all the header information sent from Yahoo! to your webserver about the mobile device. All I did was use a simple getallheaders function wrapped in the Blueprint XML. In theory this simple application should render perfectly across thousands of devices.

Here’s my entire mobile application file which is accessible at bp.justinhartman.com.

<?php
	header( "Content-Type: application/x-blueprint+xml" );
	header( "Cache-Control: no-cache" );
?>
 
<page>
  <content>
    <module>
      <header layout="simple">
        <layout-items>
          <block class="title">Mobile Headers</block>
        </layout-items>
      </header>
	<?php
	foreach (getallheaders() as $name => $value) {
		echo "<block>".$name.": ".$value."</block>";
	}
	?>
    </module>
  </content>
</page>

Accessing bp.justinhartman.com on my iPhone the application returned the following results which I was really impressed with.

Mobile Headers Application

So now I know the iPhone version works as expected but what about a Nokia 6610? Well the results are really disappointing. Instead of seeing the mobile headers all I get is a screen displaying my site description text (A simple application that shows you the headers from your mobile device.) with a message saying I need to install either Yahoo GO! or Opera Mini to view the application.

I tried to Install Yahoo GO! on the Nokia 6610 but I got another message saying my Windows Mobile device was not supported. How did a Symbian operating system become Windows Mobile? Anyway, I digress, I then installed Opera Mini as this was my only step left but alas more problems exist.

When accessing bp.justinhartman.com from within Opera Mini all I get is the same message, this time in French, asking me to install either Yahoo GO! or Opera Mini. Now I’m not sure if this is a Nokia 6610 problem as Opera Mini won’t work either but Yahoo! Blueprint has just failed a very simple test.

Yahoo! claim that they support thousands of mobile devices and as long as a mobile supports XHTML (including tables, forms and GIF/PNG/JPG images) and CSS2 then it should render perfectly. As you can tell my results are not as expected.

For now Blueprint has been thrown out the window as a new framework for us to develop Afrigator’s new mobile site. If it can’t even handle a 6610 then I have to wonder what phones it really will support.

I wonder if you guys can help me by accessing bp.justinhartman.com on your mobile phone and letting me know what you see. If you manage to see all your mobile headers then you know it’s working. If you do decide to help, please post your mobile phone manufacturer and model in the comment form below. Also, let me know if it works in Opera Mini on your side.

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14 Comments

I'd love to hear yours!

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February 12, 2009

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justinhartman (Justin Hartman) said:

New blog post: Creating a mobile site with Yahoo! Blueprint http://tinyurl.com/dx3s8x
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February 12, 2009

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GneiusBoyWonder said:

Works like a charm on HTC4350 using Internet Explorer. Interesting to see the Geolocation info coming through.
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February 12, 2009

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myphotographer said:

On my samsung D9001 i get:

Headers Example “A simple example Twitter Widget written as part of the Blueprint SDK”

For best experience, please update your phone.” lol, upgrade is next month!

Install Opera Mini Browser
Install Yahoo! Go

My question, what with opera and all is the .mobi TLD totally disfunct?

Anyway if any .mobi dev come across this and need some business I have some simple sites I would like developed.

myphotographergmailcom
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February 12, 2009

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Conrad Strydom said:

Bizarre, my biggest issue is that I don’t want to tie my products into a sinking ship. What happens when they want to pull the service?
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February 12, 2009

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Deems said:

Thought I’d give it a bash with WAP browser on my Samsung D900 – also showed the download Opera Mini/Yahoo Go links. Tried it with Opera Mini on mine and got all the headers
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February 12, 2009

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Darren said:

Same here with a Nokia 6110 [could've guessed as much, I suppose since its a similar phone]. Already running from Opera yet still wants me to download Opera.

Back to the drawing board for them…
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February 12, 2009

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Stii said:

I didn’t know you were going to write this, but here are my findings.

http://stii.co.za/mobile-web/yahoo-blueprint-is-less-than-ideal-vodaphone-sucks/

Darren, I assume you’re connecting through Vodaphone Live or something?
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February 12, 2009

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Darryn said:

On Nokia 6630

Headers Example “A simple example Twitter Widget written as part of the Blueprint SDK”

For best experience, please update your phone.”

Install Opera Mini Browser
Install Yahoo! Go”

Then works fine on Nokia 6630 when using Opera Mini
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February 12, 2009

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Handre said:

It works fine on my Nokia E51 with the default Nokia browser and Opera Mini 4, but Opera Mini 3 does not show the lines between the headers.
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February 13, 2009

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Justin Hartman said:

Thanks for all the testing guys. From the looks of things it would appear that while Blueprint is great at handling “newer” phones it seems somewhat incapable and inconsistent with older models.

The killer here for me is that some of these “older” phones are not even that old and I can’t get how Yahoo! don’t support them…

Anyway, guess it’s back to trying to figure this out ourselves!
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February 19, 2009

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CatchyTech said:

We are developing on Yahoo blueprint.
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February 19, 2009

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CatchyTech said:

We are developing on Yahoo blueprint.
http://www.catchytech.com
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April 2, 2009

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Oluniyi David Ajao said:

It displayed nicely on my Nokia E71
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November 17, 2009

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manu said:

Hi, is your blueprint site still up? do you have any more info/feedback on blueprint?

I’m looking into Blueprint, and I wanted to know how you felt it evolving?
Any reason I should jump in Yahoo’s boat?