I’ve finally made the effort to finish off my little experimental .mobi site.
It’s 5 common phrases (Thank you, Hello, Yes, No and Goodbye) in a variety of common languages.
To be honest, it’s mostly for me to use! OK, so French & German I’m OK with, but I always struggle in Iberian taxis. So this should help.
(Mental note: are the killer apps for the mobile web those that you build for your own use?)
And as I travel, I’ll probably add more languages.
Hardcoding all the pages just seemed like a drag. So it seemed natural to autogenerate them. But of course languages don’t change that fast so it’s a build-time generation, rather than request-time.
And how? Well, a grid of phrases vs languages – it just had to be Excel! I drop new vocabulary into a spreadsheet and a little VBA macro spews out perfectly formed XHTML files (that, surprise… just happen to score 5 on http://ready.mobi)
I realise I’ve deviated from my “.mobi sites for beginners” vibe here.
Next stop: advertising.