cell phone enabled web site

[T Pat]

What's it take to view a video or picture that's on line with a cell phone
Do I simple have to have a separate size for cell phones?
Is there a way to send cell phone users to a page made for cell phones
Is there a script that sets everything up for you?

[Jim]

What's it take to view a video or picture that's on line with a cell phone
Do I simple have to have a separate size for cell phones?
Is there a way to send cell phone users to a page made for cell phones
Is there a script that sets everything up for you?

Option number 2, I believe Pat. It always pisses me off when I go to my bank and a few other places with my iphone and am redirected to a cell phone only site when the iphone doesn't need it.

I think this may be the code...


<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title>Test</title>
</head>
<body>

<?php
/* cell/pda browser detection */

if (strstr($_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT'], 'vnd.wap.xhtml'))
{
echo "You are using a vnd.wap.xhtml WAP browser";
}
else if (strstr($_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT'], 'vnd.wap.wml'))
{
echo "You are using a vnd.wap.wml WAP browser";
}
else
{
echo "You are using a normal browser";
}

?>

</body>
</html>

[ArtWilliams]

Hi T Pat,

I really want to do a mobile site because presumably if you're the first in then there is a greater chance of making money. Having said that, IMHO mobile is all fucked up because of lack of standards and fragmentation.

The British magazine, Practical Web Design (Issue 178) has a great article on designing sites for mobile. [I think the magazine might be called .Net in the States.] If you're serious about it then it is well worth the read. My mini summary of it would be this:

- There are no standards.
- You can adopt one of the following strategies:
1) Lowest common denominator (i.e. pics of 120px size)
2) Create a baseline of phones you'll support with Wireless CSS OR table based pages.
3) Only support the latest phones which will have full mini-browsers and video (iphone / (Google) Andriod [coming this fall] / Phones with Opera)

To answer your direct questions:

What's it take to view a video or picture that's on line with a cell phone

Fine, I've viewed NaughtyAmerica's 5 minute iPod movie verions just fine on my phone. If I were a "young buck" I'd wack off to it!

Do I simple have to have a separate size for cell phones?

See my comments above.

Is there a way to send cell phone users to a page made for cell phones

I don't know. I suspect a text link would do it. I can certainly open URLs in email on my Blackberry browser.

Is there a script that sets everything up for you?[/QUOTE]

I have seen a script that determines from the referrer info what kind of page to send someone but I am afraid I've lost the link. Look up mobile, referrer, script -- maybe add Symbian or some other phone OS. That should find it for you.

Here are some links:

dotMobi Mobile Web Developers Guides (http://dev.mobi/book)
Designing For The Mobile User Experience (http://www.littlespringsdesign.com/)
W3 Mobile Web Initiative (http://www.w3.org/Mobile/)

Good luck!