Creating only one set of webpages for different devices?

C

Champs

hi,

i'm trying to find out the most "common" or "popular" way to create a
single set of web pages for browsing and interaction over different
devices.
ie. i) full range of info (images, text etc) on desktop PC browsers,
ii) selected info on PDAs, mobile phones, wireless devices etc.

i have seen some suggestions such as using different css or xsl to
transfrom xml depending on the targeted device browser.
how do we check what type of client (desktop browsers or wireless
devices) is accessing the page?

also what difference does it make if devices is WAP or WML?
(pardon my ignorance if the above questions do not make sense, i'm a
newbie)

another thing i read up on was Microsoft Mobile Internet
Toolkit(MMIT).
does this address another issue altogether?


all in all, i wish to find out all the possible technologies, methods,
languages to enable a developer to create only one set of web pages
for many different web-enabled devices (and ultimately the most widely
used idea today).

pls provide me with some insights, and preferably with some code
samples or references.

thanks in advance.
champs.
 
I

Ilyas

Mobile Internet Toolkit (or ASP.Net mobile conrtols as it now called)
targets mobile devices and renders the correct markup which is then
sent to the requesting device. The thing to remember is that all this
happens on the server.

Because there is such a big difference between pages viewed in a
browser and a mobile device, typically, you would design two set of
aspx pages..but you can use the same web services backend stuff to
build the pages. You can use xsl to transform your data, but youd be
much much better off going down the aps.net mobile controls way as
they are precisly designed for the purpose of sending the correct
markup for the requesting device. Furthermore if new devices are
introduced, the toolkit is very adaptable and can be extended, in many
cases without writing any code on your part, whereas in the XSL
approach you would need another xsl template for each type of
device....way too much effort!

Remember all this happens on the server..if you want to run the .Net
Framework on the actuall device itself..you can do that, the thing u
need to look at is the .Net Compact framework. This only works on
Pocket PC, SmartPhone and devices running windows CE.Net. Check out
http://samples.gotdotnet.com/quickstart/compactframework/ for more
details...

Hope this helps...
 
C

Champs

Because there is such a big difference between pages viewed in a
browser and a mobile device, typically, you would design two set of
aspx pages..but you can use the same web services backend stuff to
build the pages. You can use xsl to transform your data, but youd be
much much better off going down the aps.net mobile controls way as
they are precisly designed for the purpose of sending the correct
markup for the requesting device. Furthermore if new devices are
introduced, the toolkit is very adaptable and can be extended, in many
cases without writing any code on your part, whereas in the XSL
approach you would need another xsl template for each type of
device....way too much effort!

thanks for shedding some light on this issue.
i was fretting over whether to create multiple sets of pages with
different format for different devices.
so if i interpret correctly, using xml and xsl will require a minimum
of 2 sets
ie. 1 for desktop browser, and 1 for smaller screen devices (?)

if i were to use mobile.net or j2me for that matter,
it would mean writing specifically for small screen devices only
right?


on the xml with different xsl templates, how shall i go about using
different templates for whichever client accessing?
i've seen some code examples on css where 'media="handheld"' or
something similar to it.
being a beginner to xml/xsl, i only know how to link 1 xslt to a xml.
any code samples or references is greatly appreciated.

thanks.
 

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