GPD-E supports the Zune HD release

  • Article

A couple of months ago some of us here in GPD-E Dublin got the chance to play with a development version of the new Zune HD. At the time the Zune team was still completing their work on the new device, however we managed to convince them to send us a sample unit.
WOW, what a simply cool device, so thin and with a great looking screen which is fantastic for watching movies. Of course, being mobile web guys, we also thought it would make a great browse experience too.

ZuneHD

We wanted to make sure that everyone using a Zune HD to access MSN, Bing, and many more Windows Live sites, has a fantastic web experience. This involved two teams in Dublin. The first team to start work on this was the Mobile Browse Platform team, MBP for short. MBP maintain a large database of mobile devices. Each device listed in the database comes with a bunch of capabilities which describe the device. These capabilities cover everything from JavaScript support through to touch screen and screen size information. All this raw technical information is needed by other teams to so that they can create fantastic web sites which work as intended on each device.

To collect this raw information the Mobile Browse Platform team worked really closely with the Zune team. The Zune team supplied MBP with raw information they needed. In return MBP studied the Zune browser, right down to the header information the Zune HD browser sends any website. The folks here in Dublin helped the Zune team tailor these headers, all small but important touches which ensure Zune users get a great web experience.
While the MBP team were finalising their Zune HD database entries, the Hotmail team started testing Mobile Hotmail on our Test Zune HD device. The Hotmail team made some small changes to ensure that Mobile Hotmail worked perfectly.
All this hard work ensures that from the moment the first customer uses their Zune HD to connect to Hotmail, MSN, Bing and other Windows Live services that they receive a first class experience.

Now to coincide with the launch of the Zune HD, the MBP team is making the same raw information about the Zune that Hotmail uses available to all ASP.NET developers. You can download this information for free, along with support for hundreds more devices at https://mbdf.codeplex.com.
We would like to congratulate the Zune team on a fantastic product. We are all looking forward to its success!