Detecting Device -- must be an easier way

[Grnadpa]

What do you use to detect mobile device attributes?

Starting with this forum's stickies, I eventually ended up buying "Programming the Mobile Web" by Maximiliano Firtman. His chapter on detecting the device and mobile screen attributes (CHAPTER 10 Server-Side Browser Detection and Content Delivery) is , um-m-m, daunting to say the least.

"All" I want to do is determine if the device is mobile, the screen width and assure that the font size is readable. Firtman gets into Ajax and WURFL and/or DeviceAtlas as his recommendations for device / format detection.

Is it really that hard?

Regards,

grNadpa

[felgall]

It is not really as easy as that - even with all that in place it still will not be completely accurate.

[ralph.m]

Device detection with scripts is a messy area, and many feel it's better avoided. A much easier, perhaps more 'organic' approach, is gaining interest. This slideshow explains:

Rethinking the Mobile Web by Yiibu

Basically, you style your pages such that they will be easy to read on all devices with your main style sheet. It's really a very simple, plain style sheet.

Then, for devices that can handle @media queries (part of CSS3) you provide nicer styles. This works for devices like iPhone and most desktop browsers.

[Grnadpa]

felgall sez:

It is not really as easy as that - even with all that in place it still will not be completely accurate.

ralph.m: I have read "Rethinking the Web" which is what got me to thinking about starting with mobile rather than desktop.

What's in the back of my mind, as an involuntarily retired mainframer, is to help those businesses with simple web sites gain a web presence. I'm simply exploring the idea right now -- but what I aim for is something a little bit more technical than the businessperson/hobbiest can do by themselves but not so sophisticated as having to rewrite their entire site -- i.e. pull the formatting out of the conent, but handle format through selecting the proper CSS through PHP.

[Grnadpa]

make

help those businesses with simple web sites gain a web presence

read

help those businesses with simple web sites gain a mobile web presence

[Grnadpa]

Going through this forums postings, I indirectly found this site.

Particletree » Dynamic Resolution Dependent Layouts

I understand that ie/8 and before is problematic, but is there any other major malfunction?

(grNadpa) Brian Case

[ralph.m]

I understand that ie/8 and before is problematic, but is there any other major malfunction?

Why do you think there are problems with IE8 etc? Seems OK to me, although things move quickly on the web, and I feel things have moved on quite a bit since that article was written. Still, seems to be usable.