David, this is a variation on the logic that freed us all from the worst of the IE quirks way back then. IF you remember back then, most of us would build our sites for IE5, the drive ourselves crazy trying to put in hacks for all the other browsers. (well **I** did anyway!) That was until someone came up with the simple strategy that was one of those forehead-slapping moments ....
Build for all the standards based browsers, then add hacks for the quirks of IE. DOH!! This is a bit like that. Instead of trying to build a site with hacks/quirks/switches for mobile, build a site for mobile, with fall-back for any phones you don't detect to a standards based browser, and let them scroll back and forth if necessary. SIMPLE. Worth following up, and I'll do some experiments with this in mind. Good thinking David. Cheers Mike Kear Windsor, NSW, Australia Adobe Certified Advanced ColdFusion Developer AFP Webworks http://afpwebworks.com ColdFusion 9 Enterprise, PHP, ASP, ASP.NET hosting from AUD$15/month -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of David Hucklesby Sent: Friday, 7 January 2011 5:00 PM Rather than doing a "switch" for mobile agents, I read recently a proposal to do basic styling for mobile first. Then filter "advanced" styles for browsers, from smart phones to desktops that understand @media queries, simply by declaring some @media filters at the bottom of the style sheet. I don't remember where I read it, but it seems to me to have other advantages--old browsers like IE6 would only get the simple styles, too, making it much easier to give IE6 visitors a pleasant experience without the usual extensive "fix-ups" some layouts seem to need. While I don't have a link to the original, very short article, the idea has been taken up by others: <http://www.slideshare.net/bryanrieger/rethinking-the-mobile-web-by-yiibu> (If that breaks, try http://goo.gl/VqJE ) The downside is that neither IE7 nor IE8 understand @media queries. The idea I am playing with uses Paul Irish's "Conditional stylesheets vs CSS hacks" idea to filter rules for IE 6-8. <http://paulirish.com/2008/conditional-stylesheets-vs-css-hacks-answer-neith er/> (Broken? try http://goo.gl/CRQY ) I'll certainly be interested in any other possibilities. I have not got very far with this myself... Cordially, David ******************************************************************* List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [email protected] *******************************************************************
