IE on Ipaq (PPC 2002) is so castrated...

[rseidl]

In an effort to write asp pages that work on Desktop browsers, Audreys and Pocket PCs (I have an Ipaq 3850) I have run into some bizarre issues with Internet Explorer on Pocket PC 2002...

Perhaps someone has workarounds, otherwise this is just a way to share my frustrations [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

1. IMG tag sizing
When you specify just one dimension in an image tag (for example width="100%", the other dimension is supposed to proportionally scale along, so you dont have to explicitly calculate it) Not on PPC: it just stretches the image in one direction. Also, the other (vertical) direction is neither proportional nor the native image height. Arghhh. Also, WIDTH="100%" doesn't stretch to 100% of the width, but seems to make the image wider than the screen width.
<This works fine on the desktop IE of course>

2. flaky reloads
On PPC, the browser is much less likely to reload a page from a server when a href contains a form submission. For example
<A HREF="test.asp?key=value">test</a>
will reload the page every time from the server on my desktop browser, but not on my PPC. I have to hack a uniquifying extra value into the URL to force the reload, eg
url = "test.asp?key=value&dummy=" & CInt(Rnd()*10000)

3. broken Document Object Model
unlike the desktop browser, PPC IE doesnt understand:
document.all
document.all.myForm
document.all["myForm"]
document.all.items("myForm")
sigh

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Robert's Audrey pages
http://www.canoma.com/audrey
http://www.canoma.com/audrey/controlpanels

[JustinGould]

For item 2, make sure your ASP's writing the following header:
<meta http-equiv="Cache-Control" content="must-revalidate" forua="true">

Justin

[rseidl]

Good tip, thanks.

Re 1. There is an option in PPC IE to "View>Fit to screen" which has some effect on the way Images are sized.
From Designing Web Sites for the Internet Explorer for Pocket PC:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>
If you wish to display an image that is larger than the working area, Pocket Internet Explorer will follow these rules:

If “Fit to screen” is OFF, Pocket Internet Explorer displays the image as specified with the &lt;IMG&gt; tags, honoring the “height” and “width” attributes or the original image size, if the attributes are not specified.
If “Fit to screen” is ON and…
The image is smaller then the screen width, the image displays as specified in the &lt;IMG&gt; tag.
The image is wider then the screen width, the image shrinks to fit to the screen, but never smaller than one-half of its original width.
Scaling reduces the quality of many images, so you might consider avoiding images wider than the smallest supported viewing area.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I should also mention that if "Fit to screen" is off, PPCIE apparently thinks its screen width is 640 pixels so your images will STILL be scaled all wrong if you do something like 100%. The actual screen width is 240 pixels.

What a mess. Bottom line: you have to handcraft custom code for PPCIE. Either weave that into your asp file using the browser detection code in the link above or just make a seperate web page for PPCIE.

Re 3. Document Object Model
PPCIE has extremely limited DHTML like document object model access - only anchors, forms, links collections. Also, CSS stylesheets and tags are not supported. BUT if you want to work with XML and XSL, you can. See Microsoft XML Support with the Internet Explorer for Pocket PC and Using XML and XSL in Pocket Internet Explorer.

----------------------------
Robert's Audrey pages
http://www.canoma.com/audrey
http://www.canoma.com/audrey/controlpanels