Handheld detection!

Forum Moderators: bakedjake

Message Too Old, No Replies

Handheld detection!

How to detect??

NeoN

9:06 pm on Jan 16, 2002 (gmt 0)

Hi all. I have been reading about the different cases with the clients that browse with Handheld..
The question is how to detect the PDA?? I understand, that Pocket PDA show the browser as usual IE, right??
How is that working?? Does that scale the pictures to show them on one screen?

What about Palm PDA?? What browser do people use under that?? I have a Palm OS device, but do not use that for browsing :)
Any experience???????

Thank you!

oilman

9:10 pm on Jan 16, 2002 (gmt 0)

From what I understand most handheld processing is not done live. Users sync their devices and download pages they want to read offline. Most of this is done through services such as AvantGo and Mazingo. You can simply do a UA detect for these guys and away you go.

NeoN

7:06 am on Jan 17, 2002 (gmt 0)

That is one way to browse offline. .I do in this way with this forum. :) But you should just connect the PDA to the cell phone, and you are online and you can surf in usual way.

Thanks for your idea, though.

bird

5:42 pm on Jan 17, 2002 (gmt 0)

You need motion detection. If it shakes, then it's probably hand held... ;)

txbakers

7:01 pm on Jan 17, 2002 (gmt 0)

I would think that you could get the browser type by putting an alert in the javascript which checks for browser.type. Then you could code for that.

Since my main site isn't for general browsing, I would give an alternative URL for the handheld version of the site.

Most handheld browsers can't use advanced javascript or too many images, so my PDA site is very simple - mostly text.

txbakers

9:40 pm on Jan 17, 2002 (gmt 0)

Here is some ASP javascript code that returns the type of the browser. I just tried it in a very simple ASP page and it returned IE on IE and handheld on my blackberry.

<%@LANGUAGE="JAVASCRIPT"%>
<% var bc = Server.CreateObject("MSWC.BrowserType") %>
<html>
<head><title>blah</title>

</head>
<body >
<% if (bc.browser == "IE") { %>
Internet Explorer
<%} else if (bc.browser == "NN") { %>
Netscape
<% }else { %>
handheld
<% } %>
</body>
</html>