How do I create alternate HTML site for portable devices?

[Chris Roy]

I'd love some information on how to detect and redirect portable device browsers (phones/PSP/palm etc.) to an alternate website designed for such devices. Anyone know what screen size would be ideal? Any other problems with trying to do this? Media players compatable?

[tfennelly]

I'd love some information on how to detect and redirect portable device browsers (phones/PSP/palm etc.) to an alternate website designed for such devices. Anyone know what screen size would be ideal? Any other problems with trying to do this? Media players compatable?

Hi Chris.

If you're developing in Java, take a look at the Milyn Project. It has Java components for:
1. Browser Recognition: What is the make and model of the requesting browser. Supports regular expressions etc
2. Browser Profiling: e.g. Screen Size:- small, medium, large. Screen Orientation:- portrait, landscape etc
3. A JSP Taglib: For writing JSP pages that can take advantage of the above mentioned device recognition and profiling. Include, exclude or select content for the page response based on the make or profile of the browser e.g. if it's a "small" device, only respond with the opening paragraph of a passage of text etc
4. Browser Aware Response Content Filtering: A pluggable component framework that allows development of Java components that can be plugged in and used to manipulate specific elements of markup on responses going to a specific browser or profile o browser e.g. one of the XForms tags for all responses going to browsers with no XForms support.

[kiwibrit]

I think you are in the wrong section. That said, your question does have accessibility implications, and it is something I am interested in. I am thinking something along the lines of styling - as one does for printer-friendly pages.

[felgall]

Since HTML just defines the content it can be the same for all devices. You then set up different stylesheets to define how the page is supposed to display on the different devices and use the media attribute to link the appropriate one into the page.


media="screen" for the computer screen
media="print" for printed output
media="handheld" for mobile devices.

[tfennelly]

Since HTML just defines the content it can be the same for all devices.

What about devices with small displays? You may wish to show less content or break the page into multiple pages!

What about browsers with vendor specific added value capabilities that you wish to take advantage of on that browser, but not present to others?

What about older mobile browsers that don't have full CSS support?