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encyclo - 1:08 am on Jun 2, 2006 (gmt 0)
1. Let the markup handle it The first approach is the W3C way, using semantic markup and table-free designs meaning that you are already sending lean and meaningful markup to all devices. The HTML stays the same throughout, whether you are viewing on a regular monitor or a phone screen. The The advantages are that you are making your site device independent, vastly simplifying your management and leveraging web standards to deliver your content to the widest possible audience. The downsides are that phone/PDA support for CSS, in particular handheld stylesheets, is patchy (with many simply applying screen rules, often badly), and that if you don't differentiate then you may be serving inappropriate content (large graphics, extra text...) instead of a simplified page, reducing your site's usability. 2. Let the browser handle it In particular, we are talking about modern phone browsers such as Opera [opera.com]. Opera is a leader in this area, and that browser uses small-screen rendering technology to intelligently modify page layouts to display them logically within the narrow confines of a phone screen. This means that you can continue using tables, fixed widths, etc. and the browser will override when needed and do a great job of reworking your site built for 800x600 screens. The advantages are again that you need to do very little - just let the technology do the work. Same downsides as the standard markup approach - the browser can only do so much to make your site mobile-friendly, and you are relinquishing any control over how your site will function on a small screen. 3. Let the server handle it This approach is more complex, but can produce good results. It depends on browser sniffing and server-generated output, serving simplified markup and reduced content specifically designed for small screen situations. This can be a redirect to a mobile-content subdomain or domain or user-agent based page generation. The advantages are that if you can accurately detect phone/PDA users you can tailor the output specifically for them, with lower page weight, reduced clutter and fewer images. The downsides include the complexity of the user agent identification process (browser sniffing is fallible), and it requires active long-term management to cater for new phone and browser releases. Also if you use a separate URL structure, it can create a duplicate of your primary site unless you are careful to disallow indexing of the mobile-specific content. Ideally, you will consider a combination of methods - your site should be using mobile-friendly markup which can be used not just by regular browsers and phones, but screenreaders and other devices too. You can test your sites in Opera - just press Shift+F11 in your regular Opera browser. You can also look at detecting common phone user agent strings of IP addresses for phone proxies and tailor your content output from your database to get a better result for those visitors. What approaches have others used for dealing with phone users? Is anyone testing their sites on small screens?
There are three basic approaches to dealing with mobile phone/PDA users: @handheld CSS rules come into the equation here.
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