On Mon, Feb 06, 2012 at 09:01:45PM +0000, Stuart Dallas wrote: > On 6 Feb 2012, at 05:58, Paul M Foster wrote: > > > This is sort of obliquely related to PHP. > > > > I don't have a smart phone, but I need to know a couple of things: > > There are simulators available for most smartphones. > > > 1) Do smart phones use the same browsers as the desktop, or do they > > have their own stripped down versions of browsers? > > The trend is certainly moving towards full desktop capability, but > personally I still think that if you expect a significant amount of > traffic from mobile devices then your site should adapt accordingly. > > > 2) When a browser broadcasts its header telling the server what kind > > of browser is involved, do they broadcast anything in the header to > > indicate that they're being run on a smart phone? > > Yes, but there's no standard at the moment so detection requires > something similar to https://gist.github.com/1124666. That code is > pretty old, and I can't remember where I got it, but at the time it > worked really well. > > > 3) Bonus question: Is there a preferred method amongst coders to > > determine what type of environment is being browsed from, so as to > > serve up the proper type of page (desktop or smart phone version of > > a webpage)? > > Generally speaking you're better off with a design that automatically > adapts to the viewport on which it's being displayed. While there's > more than one reason for this, the overriding reason is that the same > software (i.e. the same user agent) could be running on any size of > device, from watch to huge flat panel screen on a wall. > > I think the world needs to move on from "is it a mobile device or not" > to accepting the reality which is that the browser / OS is irrelevant, > and that the way your site renders should be purely based upon the > size of the display. Responsive designs such as that described in the > A List Apart article Mari posted are fantastic tools for achieving > this goal. > I'm inclined to agree. In fact, my daughter, who owns an iPhone, hates the mobile-only webpages and will normally opt to see the full (desktop) website, even on her iPhone. She'd rather gesture around the original website than see a vastly simplified version with everything vertically stacked, as it often is on strictly mobile sites. Paul -- Paul M. Foster http://noferblatz.com http://quillandmouse.com -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
