At least for the top mobile browsers such as Nokia S60, the Safari
version for iPhone and Opera's mobile browsers, they can cope with
full HTML and XHTML and CSS, so they can handle the regular desktop
site. Some render the page in desktop mode, and some reformat the
page to fit in one column. Opera mobile can do both. This solution
can give quite good results. If you want to optimise the site then
you can use handheld stylesheets and/or CSS Media Queries.
Unfortunately it doesn't seem like Nokia or Apple will be supporting
handheld, but they will most likely support Media Queries (they are
included in the latest WebKit builds). Opera Mobile supports both
and Opera Mini will fully support handheld stylesheets in Opera Mini
4 (and Media Queries I believe).
Using media queries to give a different stylesheet to devices
under a certain resolution will work well except in less modern
mobile browsers that are still WAP based or have poor standards
support. These should be marginalised as carriers and handset makers
look for better browsers to include in their phones after seeing what
full html browsers can do. Opera is certainly seeing this, with
having deals in place with many major handset makers like
SonyEriksson, Nokia, Palm, HTC, Samsung, Motorla, Toshiba etc and
Carriers such as T-Mobile, Telefonica (number 1 in Spain), TMN
(number 1 in Portugal) shipping Opera Mobile (smartphones) or Opera
Mini (any phone with Java) and more announcements in the pipeline.
The other browser makers with poor standards support will have to
improve their products, especially if sites take advantage of the
more interesting technologies such as Media Queries.
The third option is to make a mobile specific site, which is often
done in XHTML Basic or Mobile Profile (be careful here as a well
formness error in XML will likely make the page not render at all).
This is often the best option if you either have a very heavy regular
site that will be difficult to navigate on mobile and take a lot of
bandwidth and time to download (Kb often equals money for many mobile
web users), or you want to give mobile specific content that fits the
context of using a mobile. The down side to this approach is that
you will have two sites to maintain instead of one, while with media
queries or handheld style you only have one extra stylesheet, so this
approach should only be taken if you need to and have the resources.
This kind of site will work better on older style mobile browsers
however.
One of the biggest issues with mobile web design is actually the
fonts. Many phones, especially feature phones are limited to one
font in limited sizes and no italic fontface. This can make Opera
Mini 3 look different one one phone than it does on another, so don't
expect pixel perfect layouts.
David
On 31 May 2007, at 12:02, Nick Cowie wrote:
Hi Katrina
I have not done enough research on this, but:
If I creating a site that I expected mobile browsers to visit (ie
every site I create from now) I would use XHTML 1.0 transitional
DTD, mime type of text/html and restrict my XHTML to the XHTML-MP
subset and my CSS to the WCSS subset
If I was building a mobile only site (and I have not done that
yet), I would have to be convinced of the advantages of moving to
a XHTML-MP dtd and associated mime type. In other words XHTML 1.0
transitional works with most browsers, computer or mobile based.
I have done no research of redirecting mobile users to a different
URL, .Apparently the WP-PDA plugin http://imthi.com/wp-pda does
this and works with the major mobile browsers, so time to play with
it.
Nick
--
Nick Cowie
http://nickcowie.com
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Opera Software
Oslo, Norway
W: http://my.opera.com/dstorey
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