Thread

So let’s say we have a wonderful, shiny ExpressionEngine powered website up and running and you want to create a mobile-optimized site…jqTouch, optimized CSS, or however else.

What’s the best practice for a) detecting the mobile device so as to “go” to the mobile version, and b) letting the visitor choose to view the full site if they want?

Progressive Enhancement. 😊 Take a look at enhance.js: http://www.filamentgroup.com/lab/introducing_enhancejs_smarter_safer_apply_progressive_enhancement/  Simple and really well done. Recently used it and works great.

Another method:

You can use a snippet of PHP (with get_browser) to do the mobile browser detection, then forward those users to a different template folder which uses jQTouch or Sencha (or the upcoming jQMobile).

The only problem we have with enhance.js for this purpose is that some mobile browsers (like the iPhone) will still pass the tests, when we still want to display a mobile-optimized version of the site for them with Sencha. Also, directing the user without javascript should be faster.

I’d recommend against get_browser(), as it relies on browscap.ini.  Unless you control your production environment, you can’t always guarantee it will be installed.  If you’re on EE2, you can use the CodeIgniter User Agent class, as we do something similar in the control panel to detect the UA.

-greg

Agree with Greg here, using the User Agent class from CI makes more sense and more reliable. Tried also fooling around with Sencha but am waiting out a month or two before deciding which mobile framework to use, see who is coming out ahead 😊

I just came across Andy Moore’s solution at http://detectmobilebrowsers.mobi/. Seems easy enough. Will report back.

MX mobile detect

I’m looking at MX mobile detect as well.  I do have a question that I hope the community can shed some light on.

Let’s say I use MX mobile detect and it detects an iOS or Android browser and redirects them over to the mobile version of the site.  I want to put a link to give the user the option to “View the Full website”.  How do I override the mobile browser detect?

I’m curious how you all are handling redirection to a separate template group for mobile devices using MX Mobile Detect?

There is no problem if redirecting to a ‘http://domain.com/mobile’ based set of templates.  But how would you set up a redirect to ‘http:/m.domain.com’?  Probably some .htaccess magic, but what?

TIA

Randy

You would either set a subdomain redirect in your domain settings or use .htaccess.  I chose to use the former method.

Thanks.