Updating Mobile Re-Direct Code

[Jason Dunn]

All Thoughts Media Web sites have code (written by Fabrizio of course!) that detects the incoming Web browser request and serves up either a desktop version of the site, or a mobile version, depending on the client requesting the page. Every so often we update the code to make sure we're addressing as many clients as possible. So here's what I'd like you do to: with your mobile device, visit the site you're reading this on. If you get re-directed to the mobile version, things are workings as they should. ;-) If you're using a Windows Mobile-based Pocket PC or Smartphone, you should be seeing the mobile site. If you're not, odds are you've done a registry hack to change the user agent<br /><br />For users of other mobile devices, if you don't get re-directed to the mobile site, please go to this URL:<br /><br /><a href="www.pocketpcthoughts.com/tools/ua.php">www.pocketpcthoughts.com/tools/ua.php</a><br /><br />Record the user agent string it reports, then post it as a comment in this thread so we can add it to our code. Thanks for your help in improving our system!

[duncanhbrown]

Jason-
This worked great! When will everybody else catch up to you!?

[whydidnt]

:oops: Using a Clie UX-50 with Netfront 3.0 - I get the non-mobile site, here is the string:

Mozilla/4.0 (PDA;PalmOS/sony/modelprmr/Revision:1.1.54(en))NetFront/3.0

[sfjlittel]

User agent string for minimo v0.1:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux armv5tel; rv:1.7a) Gecko/20040218

I don't really mind because the browser is very fast and displays the frontpage without having to scroll sideways.

[g0097]

lm using a SonyEricsson P900 with Opera as the web browser. The page is reformatted perfectly to fit the page but its the full version not the mobile.

Mozilla/4.1 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Symbian OS) Opera 6.20 [en]

[unxmully]

The t3 responds as:

Mozilla/4.76 [en] (PalmOS; U; Webpro3.0;Palm-Arzl)

And and the iBook as:

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/124 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/125.1

[williamstephens007]

Guys, there is already a system that does this, and much more and it is called ASP.NET. No sense in re-writing the wheel when you can leverage all this fully devleoped and tested code. PHP sucks anyway, php is a poor man's scripting language and any database admin worth a crap knows that MySQL is a joke of a database. It is like a little kid's version of a database. Anyway, just wanted to let you know. Step out of the 90's and get running with a real platform : ASP.NET.

[Kacey Green]

Guys, there is already a system that does this, and much more and it is called ASP.NET. No sense in re-writing the wheel when you can leverage all this fully devleoped and tested code. PHP sucks anyway, php is a poor man's scripting language and any database admin worth a crap knows that MySQL is a joke of a database. It is like a little kid's version of a database. Anyway, just wanted to let you know. Step out of the 90's and get running with a real platform : ASP.NET.

look he's only got one post and joined today

higly suspect but maybe just a coincidence

[Steven Cedrone]

look he's only got one post and joined today

higly suspect but maybe just a coincidence

Please don't feed the troll... :wink:

Steve

[Kacey Green]

look he's only got one post and joined today

higly suspect but maybe just a coincidence

Please don't feed the troll... :wink:

Steve

k

edit:
do we have an emoticon for don't feed the troll

[ChuckyRose]

I'm using an NTT DoCoMo phone. A little old so I don't know how much you'll actually get in terms of usage, but here's the string anyway:

DoCoMo/1.0/D504i/c10

Pretty random one I guess.

ChuckyRose

[Wiggster]

Guys, there is already a system that does this, and much more and it is called ASP.NET. No sense in re-writing the wheel when you can leverage all this fully devleoped and tested code. PHP sucks anyway, php is a poor man's scripting language and any database admin worth a crap knows that MySQL is a joke of a database. It is like a little kid's version of a database. Anyway, just wanted to let you know. Step out of the 90's and get running with a real platform : ASP.NET.

Wow...

First, let me quote what I agree with.
"Guys"
(Assuming it's the gender-neutral form of "guys")

Anyone worth their salt as a web developer knows how nonsensical, incorrect, and affable that is, so I won't bother.

Oh, and the new detection script is rock-solid on my iPAQ, no complaints. Except for the logo. Why is "Thoughts" italicized? You saying we have crooked thoughts? :wink:

[JustinGTP]

Guys, there is already a system that does this, and much more and it is called ASP.NET. No sense in re-writing the wheel when you can leverage all this fully devleoped and tested code. PHP sucks anyway, php is a poor man's scripting language and any database admin worth a crap knows that MySQL is a joke of a database. It is like a little kid's version of a database. Anyway, just wanted to let you know. Step out of the 90's and get running with a real platform : ASP.NET.

Wow...

First, let me quote what I agree with.
"Guys"
(Assuming it's the gender-neutral form of "guys")

Anyone worth their salt as a web developer knows how nonsensical, incorrect, and affable that is, so I won't bother.

Oh, and the new detection script is rock-solid on my iPAQ, no complaints. Except for the logo. Why is "Thoughts" italicized? You saying we have crooked thoughts? :wink:

Didn't Steve just ask us to not feed the troll?

[Russ]

What happens if people change their browser strings ? Would you not be better of with big browser CSS and unstyled content for those that don't support it and a handheld CSS for those that do ?

Russ

[bbarker]

The mobile versions work. but on Digital Media Thoughts the text is just a little too wide, requiring horizontal scrolling. It has always been like that, reducing the value of a mobile version.

[Anthony Caruana]

My plain vanilla iPAQ 2210 sees all the sites fine except for ...www.thoughtsmedia.com

The 'corporate' site doesn't act mobile friendly for me. I'm using Reen Soft's PIE Plus.

Also, and this is just a suggestion, when you do a common post to all the sites it appears three times on the www.thoughtsmedia.com page. Perhaps for these sorts of posts you need to create them at the corporate home and push them to other sites rather than create them three times and pull them to www.thoughtsmedia.com.

Just a thought...pardon the pun.

[FredMurphy]

Guys, there is already a system that does this, and much more and it is called ASP.NET. No sense in re-writing the wheel when you can leverage all this fully devleoped and tested code. PHP sucks anyway, php is a poor man's scripting language and any database admin worth a crap knows that MySQL is a joke of a database. It is like a little kid's version of a database. Anyway, just wanted to let you know. Step out of the 90's and get running with a real platform : ASP.NET.

Wow...

First, let me quote what I agree with.
"Guys"
(Assuming it's the gender-neutral form of "guys")

Anyone worth their salt as a web developer knows how nonsensical, incorrect, and affable that is, so I won't bother.

Oh, and the new detection script is rock-solid on my iPAQ, no complaints. Except for the logo. Why is "Thoughts" italicized? You saying we have crooked thoughts? :wink:

Didn't Steve just ask us to not feed the troll?
Can we kick the troll?

I'm a big ASP.NET fan but the mobile stuff does have a few problems. Microsoft's own code (for things like the asp:LinkButton) worked with PIE on PocketPC 2002, but fails with PocketPC 2003. Supposed to downgrade gracefully with different browsers but even fails on one of their own. :roll:

[Jason Dunn]

Oh, and the new detection script is rock-solid on my iPAQ, no complaints. Except for the logo. Why is "Thoughts" italicized? You saying we have crooked thoughts? :wink:

To be clear, the script isn't new - it's been in place for a long, long time. This is just an attempt to broaden our scope of devices that we can detect.

Regarding the logo, again, it's always been like that - it's the same as the desktop logo. :wink:

[Jason Dunn]

What happens if people change their browser strings ? Would you not be better of with big browser CSS and unstyled content for those that don't support it and a handheld CSS for those that do ?

If they change their browser strings, they break their functionality on our sites. I'm pleased with how things work right now - we're not looking to change things, just improve how they work.

[Jason Dunn]

I would have appreciated this feedback being on DMT, but...

The mobile versions work. but on Digital Media Thoughts the text is just a little too wide, requiring horizontal scrolling. It has always been like that, reducing the value of a mobile version.

It's not the text - I just hit the site, and there is no horizontal scroll. What may have happened is a right-aligned graphic caused it to side-scroll. If you can contact me when you see it happening, I can try to nail down what's causing the side scrolling.

[Jason Dunn]

My plain vanilla iPAQ 2210 sees all the sites fine except for ...www.thoughtsmedia.com.

That's because we have no mobile version of that site yet, nor did I claim we did. ;-)

Also, and this is just a suggestion, when you do a common post to all the sites it appears three times on the www.thoughtsmedia.com page.

Yes, we're looking at a way of removing duplicates.

[sjr]

What happens if people change their browser strings ? Would you not be better of with big browser CSS and unstyled content for those that don't support it and a handheld CSS for those that do ?

It would be nice, im doing that on my site (non related) cept some browsers like pocket ie dont use the handheld media css type :( why cant microsft do something right for a change. so even with doing that you need to resort to a hack to force the handheld style on some handheld devices.