{"id":1837,"date":"2008-11-13T13:08:31","date_gmt":"2008-11-13T20:08:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wapreview.com\/?p=1837"},"modified":"2020-09-29T21:24:12","modified_gmt":"2020-09-30T04:24:12","slug":"verizon-using-novarras-transcoder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wapreview.com\/1837\/","title":{"rendered":"Verizon Using Novarra&#8217;s Transcoder"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft\" title=\"Verizon Logo\" src=\"https:\/\/wapreview.com\/images\/verizon.jpg\" alt=\"Verizon Logo\" width=\"122\" height=\"70\"\/>The largest US mobile carrier, Verizon Wireless has started funneling traffic between Verizon feature phones and the&nbsp; web through a transcoder from Novarra.&nbsp; Verizon calls the service &#8220;<em>Optimized View<\/em>&#8221; and has added <a href=\"http:\/\/products.vzw.com\/index.aspx?id=news_web\">promotional information<\/a> and a <a href=\"http:\/\/stage-support.vzw.com\/faqs\/Mobile%20Web\/optimized_mobile_web.html#item51\">FAQ<\/a> to their customer website&nbsp; There is also<a href=\"http:\/\/www.vzwdevelopers.com\/aims\/public\/OptimizedViewOptout.jsp\"> a page on the carrier&#8217;s developer site<\/a> which has links to a opt-out form and to a&nbsp; PDF document detailing the rules that the transcoder uses to determine which sites to transcode.<\/p>\n<p>Given the <a href=\"https:\/\/wapreview.com\/400\">disastrous effects<\/a> that VodaFone&#8217;s UK roll-out of Novarra had on mobile sites and services, I&#8217;m rather apprehensive about this.&nbsp; In the PDF, Verizon\/Novarra say that they won&#8217;t change the User Agent header&nbsp; or transcode sites that have submitted an opt-out request or have a URL corresponding to one of these patterns:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">*.mobi,&nbsp; m.*, mobile.*, avantango.*, wap.*, iphone.*, &lt;domain&gt;\/m\/*, &lt;domain&gt;\/mobile\/*, pda.*, wireless.*, wml.*, xhtml.*, &lt;domain&gt;\/m\/, &lt;domain&gt;\/gmm\/, &lt;domain&gt;\/portable<\/p>\n<p>For sites that have not opted out or do not use one of the mobile URL patterns, the transcoder will change the User Agent and a number of other&nbsp; headers to ones mimicking a desktop browser. However the site will not be transcoded if it meets any of the following conditions:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It uses one of the following <strong>mobile specific DTD<\/strong>s:\n<ul>\n<li>&lt;!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC &#8220;-\/\/OMA\/\/DTD XHTML Mobile 1.2\/\/EN&#8221; &#8220;http:\/\/www.openmobilealliance.org\/tech\/DTD\/xhtml-mobile12.dtd&#8221;&gt;<\/li>\n<li>&lt;!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC &#8220;-\/\/WAPFORUM\/\/DTD XHTML Mobile 1.1\/\/EN&#8221;<br \/>\n&#8220;http:\/\/www.wapforum.org\/DTD\/xhtml-mobile11.dtd&#8221;&gt;<\/li>\n<li>&lt;!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC &#8220;-\/\/WAPFORUM\/\/DTD XHTML Mobile 1.0\/\/EN&#8221;<br \/>\n&#8220;http:\/\/www.wapforum.org\/DTD\/xhtml-mobile10.dtd&#8221;&gt;<\/li>\n<li>&lt;!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC &#8220;-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD XHTML Basic 1.1\/\/EN&#8221; &#8220;http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/xhtml-basic\/xhtml-basic11.dtd&#8221;&gt;<\/li>\n<li>&lt;!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC &#8220;-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD XHTML Basic 1.0\/\/EN&#8221; &#8220;http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/xhtml-basic\/xhtml-basic10.dtd&#8221;&gt;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>It uses one the following <strong>MIME types<\/strong>:\n<ul>\n<li>Application\/vnd.wap.xhtml+xml<\/li>\n<li>Text\/vnd.wap.wml<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>It has a self referencing <strong>link rel<\/strong> tag:\n<ul>\n<li>&lt;link rel=\u201dalternate\u201d media = \u201chandheld\u201d href=mymobilesite.com\/&gt;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>It sends a &#8220;Cache-Control: <strong>no-transform<\/strong>&#8221; header.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I don&#8217;t have a Verizon account but I did do some limited testing in a Verizon store.&nbsp; I used a Motorola V950 which runs the Openwave 6 browser. I mostly tested my own sites.&nbsp; The transcoder seems to follow the rules in the PDF.&nbsp; None of my sites that use a mobile URL pattern, Doctype or no-transform were transcoded.&nbsp; A couple of test pages I created as copies of mobile pages but with none of the Novarra trigger conditions where transcoded even though they were under 10KB.<\/p>\n<p>I didn&#8217;t really test the quality of the transcoded pages but noticed that a two line navigation bar is added to the top and bottom of the page and pagination is used.&nbsp; I thought the transcoded version of howardforums.com was reasonably usable, but my test sites, which were under 10KB, were needlessly split into two pages.<\/p>\n<p>According to Verizon, the transcoder does offer users the ability to view the original version of any transcoded page by clicking a &#8220;Turn off Optimization&#8221; link in the bottom navigation footer. As a user, <strong>I consider this a very desirable feature which all transcoders should implement<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Secure HTTPS sites are transcoded, except for &#8220;banking sites&#8221;.&nbsp; I wonder how Novarra identifies banks?&nbsp; Users are warned that their security may be compromised when visiting a non-banking secure site through the transcoder.&nbsp; I didn&#8217;t try any secure sites so I don&#8217;t know what this warning looks like.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Transcoders are the bane of mobile web developers<\/strong>. This one will probably not be as disruptive has the Vodafone UK one was because Novarra has learned some lessons from that debacle and is doing a better job of detecting mobile sites and also because the development community is more aware of the transcoding problem and how to work around it.&nbsp; There should be no impact on m. and .mobi sites and others with a recognized mobile URL pattern. Sites that use a mobile doctype and don&#8217;t do browser detection will also be unaffected.&nbsp; However, sites on .com domains that rely on the User Agent or other headers to optimize for specific handsets need to either get on the white-list or start checking the &#8220;X-Device&#8221; headers where the transcoder is putting the original values of the headers it&#8217;s modified as follows:<\/p>\n<table border=\"0\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td>Original Header<\/td>\n<td>Renamed Header<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>User-Agent<\/td>\n<td>X-Device-User-Agent<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Accept<\/td>\n<td>X-Device-Accept<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Accept-Charset<\/td>\n<td>X-Device-Accept-Charset<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Accept-Encoding<\/td>\n<td>X-Device-Accept-Encoding<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Accept-Language<\/td>\n<td>X-Device-Accept-Language<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>The Verizon transcoder can be identified by the Via: header which it sends, &#8220;1.1 Novarra (Vision\/7.3)<br \/>\nX-Mobile-Gateway: Novarra-Vision\/7.3 (VZW; Server-Only)&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Vodafone transcoder broke many content (ring tones, game, application) download sites.&nbsp; I don&#8217;t see that happening with this one because <strong>Verizon already blocks almost all off-portal downloads<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>The problem with transcoders changing headers is that it forces millions of mobile sites around the world to change their code in order to keep the same functionality. It&#8217;s an annoyance for capable mobile web developers who somehow find out that another&nbsp; transcoder has been deployed somewhere in the world. <strong> The real problem<\/strong> is with sites that aren&#8217;t actively maintained or whose developers don&#8217;t actively follow the doings of the W3C or monitor the mobile development mailing lists, forums and blogs. Which, I suspect, is the majority of sites worldwide.<\/p>\n<p>Verizon and Novarra claim that their transcoder partially follows the recommendations of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/ct-guidelines\/\">W3C Content Transformation Guidelines<\/a>. However those guidelines are still a work in progress and the issue of whether transcoders should alter the User-Agent except in a very limited number of cases such as when a site returns no content when presented with a mobile browser User-Agent is still under discussion. <strong>It would be far better for the health of the mobile web if transcoders did not alter the User-Agent<\/strong> and other headers as recommended by the <a href=\"http:\/\/wurfl.sourceforge.net\/manifesto\/index.htm\">Rules for Responsible Reformatting: A Developer Manifesto<\/a> a document that evolved from discussions on the wmlprograming Yahoo Group and which has been signed and adopted by several transcoder vendors, but not by Novarra.<\/p>\n<p><em>Related Posts<\/em>:<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/wapreview.com\/400\">Vodafone\u2019s Heavy-Handed Transcoder<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/wapreview.com\/516\">How Web to Mobile Transcoding Should Work<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/wapreview.com\/918\">Opting Out of Transcoding<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/wapreview.com\/536\">OpenWeb and InfoGin Adopt the Developer Manifesto!<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The largest US mobile carrier, Verizon Wireless has started funneling traffic between Verizon feature phones and the&nbsp; web through a transcoder from Novarra.&nbsp; Verizon calls the service &#8220;Optimized View&#8221; and has added promotional information and a FAQ to their customer website&nbsp; There is also a page on the carrier&#8217;s developer site which has links to a opt-out form and to a&nbsp; PDF document detailing the rules that the transcoder uses to determine which sites to transcode. Given the disastrous effects &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/wapreview.com\/1837\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22171,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[51],"tags":[112,262,454],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wapreview.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1837"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wapreview.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wapreview.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wapreview.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wapreview.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1837"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/wapreview.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1837\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22170,"href":"https:\/\/wapreview.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1837\/revisions\/22170"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wapreview.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wapreview.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wapreview.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wapreview.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}