Use browser script for redirecting mobile browsers to mobile site?

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nzscom

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#28706 9-Dec-2008 09:18

We're launching a mobile version of NZS.com soon and are interested in hearing anyone's feedback regarding the use of PHP scripts to sniff the browser and redirect to a mobile version of the site if it's a known mobile browser.
- Pitfalls?
- Positive feedback on it working within the NZ market well?
- Examples of Open Source code that does this?
Any further thoughts about the implementation would be appreciated.
Cheers

NZS.com: New Zealand Search | Add a Site: nzs.com/promote | Twitter: twitter.com/nzscom | Facebook: facebook.com/nzscom

zocster

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#182921 9-Dec-2008 09:57

Have used this in the past, however with browsers such as skyfire (which rocks my mobile browsing world) such things are no longer an issue really but yeah ...

nate

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#183080 9-Dec-2008 17:47

Could you not just check display resolution and redirect based on that??

freitasm

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#183091 9-Dec-2008 18:27

Looking at resolution is not really a good solution. Some Windows Mobile devices have VGA and XVGA screen resolution now - but I wouldn't use it because fonts get too smal.

Better look at user-agent.

As for Skyfire... Yes, it's neat. But all mobile devices I've seen so far are awfully slow to render pages, and load stuff over the air.

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#183093 9-Dec-2008 18:31

* Handheld stylesheet
* CSS3 stylesheet - conditional CSS3 - used by iPhone/iPod Touch Safari
* mobile URL e.g. mobile.nzs.com instead of www.nzs.com
* reduce the use of images as much as possible and leaving the bare essential, to help reduce any further cost on your site visitor on mobile devices.

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zocster

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#184157 15-Dec-2008 04:57

freitasm:
As for Skyfire... Yes, it's neat. But all mobile devices I've seen so far are awfully slow to render pages, and load stuff over the air.

Funny you mentioned that, just downloaded the latest one and it gave me a warning on first start up 'your region is not currenlty supported, some services may be degraded' ... I guess since they don't have a localised server for NZ things could get slow in rendering, let's hope they solve that soon.

zocster

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#188393 9-Jan-2009 14:45

oh well they've released their newest beta, those with symbian and winmo go to get.skyfire.com and download for your mobile, seems to have improved a hell of a lot.