On Aug 19, 2008, at 4:40 AM, RobG wrote:
> > The logic here is completely at odds with your statement above. > It's really not. I don't have time to digress into a pointless argument over semantics and point out why this, and the arguments later about me somehow suggesting that you should use UA sniffing because I said so are just simplistic and designed to undercut and redirect attention away for the purposes of proving a point. In the end, it doesn't matter. Do whatever you want. For whatever reason or no reason. JUST BUILD APPS. Good apps that provide good functionality to users. How you go about doing that really doesn't matter. They're not gonna care whether you used feature detection or UA sniffing. Only other developers will care. You can't rely on browser vendors. It's not reflective of reality to say a web developer should write a standards-based app that doesn't care about what's on the user's end. In a perfect world, a lot of things would be different. But this isn't a perfect world and new apps allow developers to write apps that push the edge of the browser's capabilities. It's not pragmatic to say you shouldn't have to think about that. It's unfortunate, but the only thing to do is just get over it and deal with the consequences. Feature detection doesn't help you send down CSS or images that are specific to that browser. Period. Why include three or four different stylesheets when you can include one? The structure of my pages is different for iPhone than for desktop browsers. How, exactly, would I use feature detection (other than using it to set a cookie or other variable announcing that I'm version "iPhone OS 2_0_1") to make template-time decisions about what gets included in the page and where? How would I use feature detection to send a different image for iPhone because the gradients don't look good on a white background? How do I feature-detect "-moz-border-radius" on the server? I used GWT as an example of empirical evidence of targeting specific browsers using code tailored to that browser. Empirical means judge for yourself. Not because I said so, but because you actually investigated it and can make up your own mind. Because I like UA sniffing for *some* things, I somehow support detecting 78,000 unique UA strings? Again, hyperbole in the interest of proving a point. I think it's fairly obvious to most people that UA strings contain enough reusable information to make them useful. I don't understand why this topic has to become religious every time the subject is touched upon. We're talking about the iPhone here. A known quantity. Feature detection is a perfectly legitimate way to write JavaScript to target that. If you're wanting to extend the customization of your app beyond just JavaScript, then you've either got to use feature detection to build a configure-like set of variables that tell your server what the UA can do, or you sniff the UA string. It's a decision that no one's life depends on and can be made wrongly and flippantly. Whatever you feel comfortable with, do. All things in moderation... Thanks! Jon Brisbin http://jbrisbin.com --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "iPhoneWebDev" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/iphonewebdev?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
