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The unofficial independent imode FAQ
4. Developing for imode
4.1 How can I develop content for imode?
imode uses cHTML, which is a subset of HTML. You need to develop your content in
cHTML.
cHTML has been submitted to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in 1984: http://www.w3.org/Submission/1998/04/
http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/NOTE-compactHTML-19980209/
imode also uses special tags in addition to ordinary HTML, e.g. a tag which allows
to place a voice call by placing a link, and other extra tags.
imode also uses special characters for trains, shinkansen, taxi, kisses, joy, sadness, hot spring baths etc to
express emotions, etc in daily life.
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4.5 Which character set can I use for imode? Which character encoding does imode use in Japan? Does imode us UNICODE?
Almost all users of imode in Japan are Japanese, therefore you need to write your
content in Japanese language using Japanese characters. Japanese text on imode uses
"Shift-JIS" encoding. Imode in Japan does not use UNICODE at this moment in time.
In addition, all Japanese mobile internet systems (i-mode, EZweb, and Vodafone Live!) use e-moji (image-characters).
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4.6 What are "emoji"?
Imode (and competing services such as EZweb and Vodafone-Live!)
use 100s of special symbols and characters (e.g. for kisses, hot bath, Shinkansen train etc),
which are not part of the normal set of Japanese characters. A Japanese
enabled web browser will show these special characters as a question mark.
These picture characters are called "emoji"
in Japanese ("e" = picture, "moji" = character).
The e-moji are not compatible between the competing systems and are part of the competitive strategy.
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4.7 What about JAVA?
JAVA enabled handsets were introduced in early 2001. JAVA enabled handsets
contain the K virtual machine (KVM) from SUN.
Users can download JAVA applets into the handsets for games,
agent type services and other applications. Today a large fraction of
handsets of all three competing mobile internet systems use JAVA, and
JAVA applets are a very important component of Japans mobile internet systems.
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