Changing the Design of a Page for Wireless Devices with the Handheld Media Type

[MikyZuma]

If you haven't already started thinking about how your Web pages look on cell phones and other small devices, now, with the advent and popularity of the iPhone, Treo, and Blackberry, you may want to reconsider. It would be great if we didn't have to do anything to our Web pages to have them viable on cell phones, but until some science fiction device comes true allowing us to view 1024x768 sized images on 320x160 screens, we're going to need to cope.

Web Design Los Angeles need to use the link method to attach your style sheets, as wireless devices don't have to download those style sheets they don't need (in other words, the screen and print ones). Plus, many built-in browsers on cell phones don't support the @media and @import methods of loading style sheets.
The user-agent knows what type of media it can display, and will download and use the style sheet for that appropriate media type. For example, computer screens use "screen", print uses "print", and wireless handheld devices use "handheld".

Some wireless devices refuse to use the "handheld" media type, and instead display Web pages using the "screen" media type. Others ignore both style media types, so you might want to include a very basic style sheet at the top for "all" media types. And finally, some cell phones strip out all style information completely, leaving a page that is very simple.

[teller]

Before charging ahead and spending time and money on a mobile version of your site just check how many visitors you get from mobile devices. Your web analytics tool should give you a clear picture of the % and also what's the breakdown of OS and devices. If the numbers are small and visitors unimportant then just come back in 6 months time and check what's changed.