Comments on: iPhone / Android Optimized Theme

By: Mobile Website

Mobile Website — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 10:14:35 +0000

For web designers, mobile web design is becoming an easy way to acquire new clients. It amazes me how few web design companies are offering this for their clients.

By: Bill

Bill — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 14:11:36 +0000

Thanks Jake. Makes perfect sense. I guess I was thrown off by the line:

‘That’s why we’ve released version 1 of “C. Murray Consulting Mobile”.’

I read that and quickly looked for a ‘download’ link.

By: Jake Goldman

Jake Goldman — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 02:53:40 +0000

Bill – it’s not a standalone theme.

Let me clarify a bit – the WordPress site template is a collection of files that generate the look and feel for this entire site. We custom built our own simple template (that you see here), and we will not be giving it away (mostly because, as web experts, we want a unique site).

If you visit our site on an iPhone or Android phone all of the template elements (and output HTML) are almost exactly the same… with one small and one big exception. The small one – we add some special viewport JavaScript. The big one – we load an alternate stylesheet. Good, modern websites are built to have a generic, clean HTML structure. In theory (and in practice, here) just changing the stylesheet can result in a completely different look and feel. Makes maintenance, look and feel upgrades, and alternate views much easier!

I’d be happy to release the publicly available JavaScript code and our stylesheet, but it would be useless without the rest of the theme.

Stay tuned for that lengthier article in a few weeks… I’ll explain in more detail, and probably provide a block of code and stylesheet optimized for the default WordPress template.

By: Bill

Bill — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 23:16:31 +0000

Sounds great. Will you releasing the theme to the public for download?

By: Jake Goldman

Jake Goldman — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 22:27:16 +0000

Yes, we are doing server side detection. Our template checks the user agent with PHP, and appropriates the right stylesheet and javascript accordingly. We found this to be the fastest / lowest overhead route. We plan to allow it to be “overridden” (think “standard view”) by setting a session variable.

We’re actually planning to write a more detailed article about this within a few weeks… so stay tuned if you’re curious!

By: Kris H.

Kris H. — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 22:13:42 +0000

Are you doing server-side detection? I don’t see a iPhone/Android specific stylesheet, nor am I seeing JS…. so I’m assuming you’re sniffing the user-agent and then inserting a new stylesheet?

Oh, and also, it looks great!