Enough with the iPhone news. Let’s talk about a little detail that no one else is talking about. The interesting thing for me is how the web is joining our good friend the telephone. A while back I talked about Callto links and how these could be tied into Vonage using a little tool I wrote. So I was pretty interested to see how the iPhone would allow a web-page to connect to a telephone number.
i was expecting either callto: links or perhaps a telephone microformat or perhaps a proprietary solution.
Surprisingly it turns out that it’s none of the above. The iPhone is using a not so well known RFC to create telephone hyperlinks. This is done through a tel: link format that I’d never heard of called RFC 3966.
The format allows you to create an anchor link and use a tel: URI to point to a telephone number. For example if you wanted to contact Apple customer support you would use a link like this:
Call Apple Customer Support at 1-800-275-2273
Go ahead and give it a try, I don’t yet have an iPhone to test this out.
The link format is fairly straight forward:
<a href="tel:+1-800-275-2273"> Call Apple Customer Support at 1-800-275-2273 </a>.
If more sites start using this for their contact information other providers for the tel: URI may begin supporting the format (Vonage, Verizon, Skype, etc.) This makes it easy to transition from a web interface to a voice interface. The format also theoretically suppors alternative SIP providers and extensions making it possible to put a corporate directory online in the form of an iPhone application.
Happy telephone linking.
It works on the iPhone. Just tried it. It comes up with a dialog box with the number and a choice to “Call” or “Cancel”.
How can i append DTMF string in tel URL link?
It also works for sms, format sms:
SMS: 07976 928586 Now!
I am having trouble in the opposite direction.
I want to stop iPhone from automatic recognize a set of numbers as a phone and to “stop” from iPhone from making the number clickable.
The number format I have is 1999-2008 which is actually a copyright, yet I could “dial” it from my iPhone.
Any thoughts?
Adding a comment in response to Blake’s question. Turns out there is a meta tag for your needs:
<meta name=”format-detection” content=”telephone=no” >
This is buried in the documentation for the web-sdk:
Web Apps Dev Center > Reference Library > Guides > Apple Applications > Safari > Safari Web Content Guide for iPhone OS > Apple Applications URL Schemes > Phone Links
The only hack I’ve found to prevent one string from getting recognized while keeping detection on for the rest of the page is inserting a hidden character into the string: 2008­-­2009.
In the above ­ is a hidden hyphen marker.
hi ,
Do iphone provides way to write plug-in for iphone safari browser.
@graiz: Thanks, I dug this up and for those who want to see it as well, here is the url:
http://developer.apple.com/safari/library/featuredarticles/iPhoneURLScheme_Reference/Articles/PhoneLinks.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40007893-SW1
DTMF String??
Try creating an identical link using DTMF:
(keypad numbers only, no spaces)
Works in most versions of windows mobile.
Beverly Howard
The tel: href also works on Symbian (verified on S60 3rd). Perfect.
It also seems to work on Opera Mobile 10 (beta 2), but not because of the tel: href, but simply because it attempts to recognize phone numbers in plain text.
Works on Android 1.2 HTC Hero.
Actually I have added the tel link on the phone no which is working fine, but my question is that can I put the same tel link on any iphone formated image like telephone logo. I tried this but iphone returning error message.
Please help me!
@Dipayan: Yes, you can put such a link anywhere you can put a hyperlink. So linking the telephone image is fine too.
Arun Agrawal
@Blake
Yes you can!
Here’s Apple’s own anser to it:
http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/featuredarticles/iPhoneURLScheme_Reference/Articles/PhoneLinks.html
Scroll down to the bit that says ” Turning telephone number detection off”
Regards
Gordon Bunker