If you ever tried to install a mobile application or website, you probably felt like that. hundreds of browsers, standards, non standards and than some.
One application that tried to solve that is WURFL. What it does is keep a huge database of mobile phone browsers and their capabilities, and gives the developers a single place to get coding right.
You write once, and the API acts like a layer, and displays the corresponding code to the requesting browser/phone.
All seemed nice, until I started to install and implement it.
It first asks for a PEAR dependancy log. I installed that.
Now comes the messy part, neither instructions, not on the web nor on the downloaded package are informative enough, nor do they even correlate to the correct folder they are in.
Once tells you to update a file from one location, while residing on a different one.
It's hard to ask from people who invest of their time by writing open and free source, but if you will spend just 1,2, 5 and even 10 hours more, you will save an exponential number of hours by solving questions that the answers are already known.
I will continue with the installation process:
1. Install PEAR install log - done
And that's about the last easy step that WURFLS had to give.
There MUST be a better way to help users, I am not asking for a 24hour support line, but 1 clear easy FAQ/Forum - that will do it.
One application that tried to solve that is WURFL. What it does is keep a huge database of mobile phone browsers and their capabilities, and gives the developers a single place to get coding right.
You write once, and the API acts like a layer, and displays the corresponding code to the requesting browser/phone.
All seemed nice, until I started to install and implement it.
It first asks for a PEAR dependancy log. I installed that.
Now comes the messy part, neither instructions, not on the web nor on the downloaded package are informative enough, nor do they even correlate to the correct folder they are in.
Once tells you to update a file from one location, while residing on a different one.
It's hard to ask from people who invest of their time by writing open and free source, but if you will spend just 1,2, 5 and even 10 hours more, you will save an exponential number of hours by solving questions that the answers are already known.
I will continue with the installation process:
1. Install PEAR install log - done
And that's about the last easy step that WURFLS had to give.
There MUST be a better way to help users, I am not asking for a 24hour support line, but 1 clear easy FAQ/Forum - that will do it.
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