Support of Handheld Web Browsers

I noticed that my brokerage house as well as gmail present different (i.e.
simpler, more compact) interfaces when I surf them with my handheld (a
Blackberry) versus a desktop or laptop computer. How is that done? I've
got to assume something in the HTTP headers lets the server software know?

Thanks.

David T. Ashley wrote:
> I noticed that my brokerage house as well as gmail present different (i.e.
> simpler, more compact) interfaces when I surf them with my handheld (a
> Blackberry) versus a desktop or laptop computer. How is that done? I've
> got to assume something in the HTTP headers lets the server software know?
>
> Thanks.
>
>
>

Read up on WML.

Also look up http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/ .

--Yan

download user agent switcher addon for firefox, fire it up and import
<useragent
description="pocket pc mobile 2003"
useragent="Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Windows CE; PPC;
240x320)"
appname=""
appversion=""
platform="windows mobile edition 2003 sp2"
vendor=""
vendorsub=""
/>

shove in that as an entry, (I think you can save as a file ad import if
you cant be bothered to type)

when accessing
http://www.google.com/

their hacked version of apache (GFE/1.3) just checks the user-agent
header and redirects to
http://www.google.com/pda

from there on, you will be looking at a simple version and whatever you
click will be passed through a filter as long as you keep pda in the
url.
This way the rewrite condition based on user-agent header is done once
- I should imagine there is a long list and it would be ineffecient to
do it for each request once on /pda/... you can verfiy this by
returning your user-agent header back to firefox default and pressing
refresh, you will remain on the simple version, however navigating to
http://www.google.com will return you to the complex browser oriented
version.

you can a long list of user-agents from the url given by the previous
respondant, if you are willing to use a little xslt on the 4.1MB
wurfl.xml.

"David T. Ashley" <dta@e3ft.com> wrote in
news:Aho8h.13649$pK2.10691@fe39.usenetserver.com:

> I noticed that my brokerage house as well as gmail present different
> (i.e. simpler, more compact) interfaces when I surf them with my
> handheld (a Blackberry) versus a desktop or laptop computer. How is
> that done? I've got to assume something in the HTTP headers lets the
> server software know?
>
> Thanks.
>
>
>
>

AFAIK it is a function of the browser designed for the handheld device,
not the server.



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