If your current site does not yet offer a mobile friendly view, now may be the time to create one. More and more users are accessing the web using mobile tools, including phones & hand held electronics/PDAs. Creating a custom view for mobile users will allow your site to appeal to an ever increasing audience. You might visit your sites logs and review your hits by browser or user agent. You may be surprised with what you find, recent statistics show that at least one in one-hundred people accessing the internet is doing so via a mobile device (PDF).
The first step to creating a custom user experience for mobile devices is to determine if you want the view to be automatic, or manual. Manual methods including allowing the user to select to view your site as mobile, either with a link/button or with a different URL, for instance m.google.com. The second method is to sniff the browsers user agent, and determine the type of browser that may be visiting your site, and alter the site accordingly.
The specifics of how to do the sniffing vary by server type, but there is plenty of simple methods for determining the browser, the next step is to determine how your going to change the website.
The first method is a whole new website, once the user selects mobile, they are transfered to a completly new website that is designed for the mobile user. You may even decide to create multiple new websites designed for various different user agents. Another method, is to use style sheets alone to change the look and feel of your site for mobile users.
The second option is, of course, a lot less work. But it only works when your website has been created with this in mind, and does not often work well as an after thought. Of course the type of website makes all the difference.
I hope more people build websites with mobile users in mind, or at least offer some portion of their website content in a mobile friendly manner.
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