CakePHP CookBook: The mobile edition
Some time ago in a galaxy far far .. i was thinking about how i could read the Cookbook on my iPhone more easily. Creating a static copy in some custom format? Yes, but the options are really limited and mostly painful:
- PDF – Most, if not all, readers suck. (And there’s no pdf version either)
- HTML – Yeah right.. why not just use super-tiny Safari then.
- DOC – Possible.. if there would be good converters. etc..
Well, you get the idea. It all smells somehow..
Really, really wanting it regardless i jumped into my IDE and wrote a small content grabber in CakePHP which extracts the Cookbook pages on demand and then creates a cache for each page. With a little URL wrapping i could browse my own “self updating” Cookbook copy. Great! Now i only had to hack some CSS to make it fit perfectly in Mobile Safari.
Being happy to share i talked to _psychic_ and he liked what he saw (iPhone-owner himself) and agreed that this would be a great addition. After some more talks i just forked the Cookbook source at thechaw.com and began adding my changes plus some crazy URL rewriting hack. Crazy as in: “Don’t try this at home” style. This was then superseeded by another workaround which is much cleaner.
Anyhow. My changes have been pulled by AD7six a while ago and the CakePHP Cookbook looks nice on iPhone now. Just point your iPhone/Mobile Browser to http://book.cakephp.org/m/. Log-in works, Adding a section, etc.. It’s all there! (Expect for the search result view.. that’s a todo item right there! I’ve pushed a fix for that too, but it’s in the works.)
Here’s some iPhone porn.
Homescreen Icon
And if you add this to your Homescreen you get rewarded with a nice little CakePHP Icon.
Just for the cherry on the top.
Enjoy!
Link: http://book.cakephp.org/m/
It’s great idea!
But I have small screen on my phone (other than iPhone) and the font-size is too large…
…and maybe You think about code block for better visible:)
Those screen shots look great mate. I pulled it up on my BlackBerry Storm (9530) and it doesn’t look quite the same unfortunately. I actually have had great browsing experience on the normal cookbook from my Storm without difficulty. There is an option called “Column View” and it re-draws the page into one single column so I don’t have to scroll left and right.
ouch. yeah.. thought so. I think it wont display great on most other devices since it was developed with the iPhone in mind. Was a wild guess since it is just some different layout. I think with a little more investigation on mobile devices i could fix the font-sizes per CSS ruling.
Geat idea !
However, I confirm the font is far too big on my Nokia N95 8GB … but to be honest I do not think I will use it everyday :)
Moreover the translation links are not available on this version aren’t they ?
[...] random guy.” If only you had access to the Cookbook on your handheld mobile device. Thanks to m3nt0r you will never miss one of these opportunities again. The mobile version of the Cookbook works best on the iPhone, [...]
Ohh nice post though really??