META tags for the wireless webThe "wireless web" (the sections of the Internet designed for use with handheld computers) is one of the Web's more frustrating neighborhoods. It's a mishmash of overlapping and incompatible standards, many of which (like HDML and WML) are practically invisible to non-wireless users. Some of the other wireless standards, however, (like CHTML and S-HTML) are close enough to "normal" that they're readable in standard browsers.
This page lists the META tag values that have been
developed for use with the wireless-friendly versions of HTML.
And yes, I know everyone else calls it the Mobile Internet
now,
but it was the Wireless Web when I got here, so I'm sticking to that. So there.
This tag has been informally adopted by web developers to identify a web page that's compatible with NTT DoCoMo's imode service. At least two search imode-based search engines (i-seek and Google) use this tag to identify pages.
Because space is at a premium in imode pages (many imode browsers can't
handle pages larger than two kilobytes, the CHTML tag has no
content, and is often combined with name="content-type", creating a
META element that looks like this:
<meta name="CHTML" http-equiv="content-type: text/html; charset=Shift_JIS">
I'm not sure if that's good HTML, but it's what they do.
Reference: (keitai-l) Re: I-Mode searchengines
According to some experts on Windows CE (Microsoft's operating system for handheld computers), this META tag instructs the Pocket Internet Explorer web browser to use ClearType font-rendering when viewing the tagged web page. (Apparenty, this tag doesn't need a content attribute at all.)
References: CEwindows.net: Web Browser FAQ and PocketPCHow2 Log: 27 October 2000
The AvantGo web browser used on many handheld browsers doesn't support
the full range of HTML and Javascript that desktop browsers do. To protect
itself, it intentionally ignores certain features like TABLE
and SCRIPT. Setting the content of a
handheldfriendly tag to true, however, will instruct
AvantGo that the tagged page was designed with AvantGo in mind, and that
the use of restricted features is safe.
Reference: AvantGo: HTML Style Guide
The content of the HistoryListText tag provides
a nickname that PalmOS browsers can use for the tagged page in the
browser's history list.
Reference: HTML For Web Clipping Applications: The HistoryListText Meta Tag
This tag (like most PalmOS META tags) is for
providing instructions to the PalmOS Web Clipping Application Builder.
Web Clipping Applications are groups of related HTML files and
graphics that have been bundled into a special format suitable for saving
to the Palm Applicaton Launcher (much the same way that Microsoft's HTML Applications can be saved to the Windows desktop.)
Therefore, it's very unlikely you'll ever see this tag (or any of the other
WCA-only tags) on page
reachable with a regular browser.
Anyway, the content of this tag is the URI of a graphic that should be included in any WCA containing the tagged page. This allows authors to include non-inlined images in a WCA.
Reference: HTML For Web Clipping Applications: The LocalIcon Meta Tag
If this tag isn't present on a page (with content set to
True), PalmOS browsers won't load the page's inlined images.
Reference: HTML For Web Clipping Applications: The PalmComputingPlatform Meta Tag
Introduced in version 4.0 of the PalmOS, setting this tag's
content to true will prevent browsers from caching
a page. This tag also prevents a page from appearing in the browser history.
Reference: HTML For Web Clipping Applications: The PalmDoNotCache Meta Tag
Added in version 4.0 of the PalmOS, this tag actually provides
instructions to PalmOS proxy servers that connect PalmOS users to Web. If
the content is Indexed (or the tag doesn't exist at
all), the proxy is permitted to "indexed" URIs appearing within a document, replacing them
with index numbers that the proxy server associates with each URI. If the
tag's content is Full, indexing does not occur.
Reference: HTML For Web Clipping Applications: The PalmHREFStyle Meta Tag
Another META tag only used in Web Clipping Applications,
the PalmLauncherName tag provides a nickname to be used when the
tagged WCA is listed in the Palm Application Launcher (Palm's equivilent of
the Windows/Mac/Unix desktop). This tag was added in version 4.0 of
PalmOS.
Reference: HTML For Web Clipping Applications: The PalmLauncherName Meta Tag
The content of this WCA-only tag is a string identifying
the revision number of the Web Clipping Application built from the tagged
page. The PalmLauncherRevision will be displayin the Palm
Application Launcher as part of the application's name.
Reference: HTML For Web Clipping Applications: The PalmLauncherRevision Meta Tag
The content of this WCA-only tag is the filename of an icon to be
included in a Web Clipping Application. The icon will be displayed in the
Palm Application Launcher.
Reference: HTML For Web Clipping Applications: The PalmLargeIconFilename and PalmSmallIconFilename Meta Tags
The content of this WCA-only tag tells the Web Content Applicaton
Builder which content-encoding to use when submitted an HTML
META from the tagged page. As of June 2002, the only allowed
encodings are cp1252 (the default), EUC-JP,
iso-8859-1, iso-2022-jp, shift_jis, and
us-ascci.
Reference: HTML For Web Clipping Applications: The PalmPostEncoding Meta Tag
The content of this WCA-only tag is an integer (with permitted
values of 1, 2, 4, 8, and
16) instructing the WCA Builder of the maximum bit-depth the
Builder may use for graphics compiled into an Application.
Reference: HTML For Web Clipping Applications: The PalmPQABitDepth Meta Tag
Added in version 4.0 of the PalmOs, this tag identifies which version of
the PQA standard is used for the tagged application. The
content is an integer: 1 indicates an application
suitable for all versions of PalmOs, while 2 indicates the
application requires PalmOs version 4.0 or higher.
Reference: HTML For Web Clipping Applications: The PalmPQAVersion Meta Tag
The content of this tag is the filename of an icon to be
included in a Web Clipping Application. The icon will be displayed in the
Palm Application Launcher.
Reference: HTML For Web Clipping Applications: The PalmLargeIconFilename and PalmSmallIconFilename Meta Tags