I’ve recently been investigating making some better mobile accessible pages for some of my projects. I’ve seen pages that allow you to dial a phone number directly from the webpage – so I thought I’d investigate…
WTAI – Mobile Protocol
The WTAI protocol is a robust set of specs to add additional functionality to web accessible phones (see more here on the OMA Technical Section). What I’m really interested in, however, is the ability to dial a phone number and add a phone number to the contacts. I’ve also heard tell that some phones do not automatically prompt the user for running this command. My moto q9c does. Just keep this in mind when using these commands for designing your pages.
Dial a Phone Number
The first number we’re going to Dial is 414.555.1212. From a usability point of view, you should also clearly label your link. The format for this link is:
wtai://wp/mc;##########
The #’s represent the phone number. See my example code:
1 | <strong>Call me now: </strong><a href="wtai://wp/mc;4145551212">414.555.1212</a> |
Obviously, this will make the link access the WTAI protocol dialing method.
Storing a Contact
The format for this is similar:
wtai://wp/ap;##########;XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
The #’s represent the phone number, the X’s represent the name the contact will be stored as. See my code example:
1 | <a href="wtai://wp/ap;4145551212;Aaron Saray">Add Me to your contacts</a> |
Is there a way to have a web page (preferably a mobile page viewed from a smart phone) that will automatically dial a set phone number? I have figured out how to hyperlink a phone number so when you click on it from the phone, it will prompt to make the call. I’m looking for something that will automatically dial the number with out prompting. Kind of like making an emergency call.
Unfortunately, I do not know of a way to do that. I would assume that’s restricted – otherwise we could force people to call others unknowingly by executing a javascript “click” on a link.