PDA wireless

[displayname]

I have a Web application that is written in ASP. It runs well on regular PC.
What is needed to make it run on PDA (wireless)? I want to buy a new PDA to
test the application. Is there a particular brand of PDA or operating system
that I should buy? Thanks.

 

[Tim Slattery]

I have a Web application that is written in ASP. It runs well on regular PC.
What is needed to make it run on PDA (wireless)? I want to buy a new PDA to
test the application. Is there a particular brand of PDA or operating system
that I should buy? Thanks.

ASP runs on the web server, not the client. What kind of client you
use to access the server should make no difference to the app.

 

[displayname]

Tim, are you saying that I don't need to change any thing in my code and the
application will run on PDA as if it runs on IE7 on my PC? What about the
font size? May be I need to change all font size to smaller and make the page
a lot smaller so it can fit on PDA screen, right? But then I want to page to
be big to fill the enter screen on my PC. What's the code for detecting
whether it's PDA or PC in order to change the font size and page size
accordingly?

Which PDA (what features...) do you recommend me purchase to test out the
app? Thanks.

 

[Tim Slattery]

Tim, are you saying that I don't need to change any thing in my code and the
application will run on PDA as if it runs on IE7 on my PC? What about the
font size? May be I need to change all font size to smaller and make the page
a lot smaller so it can fit on PDA screen, right? But then I want to page to
be big to fill the enter screen on my PC. What's the code for detecting
whether it's PDA or PC in order to change the font size and page size
accordingly?

There might be something in the USER_AGENT string
(request.ServerVariables("HTTP_USER_AGENT") ). I don't think the
server will get any other indication of what the client is.

 

[Adrienne Boswell]

Gazing into my crystal ball I observed =?Utf-8?B?ZGlzcGxheW5hbWU=?=

Tim, are you saying that I don't need to change any thing in my code
and the application will run on PDA as if it runs on IE7 on my PC?

ASP knows nothing about the client, whether it's a browser, PDA, phone,
or refrigerator.

What about the font size? May be I need to change all font size to
smaller and make the page a lot smaller so it can fit on PDA screen,
right?

No, let the user's UA decide what font size to use. Do not set a font
size at all.

But then I want to page to be big to fill the enter screen on
my PC.

You might want to look at the @media directive for CSS, @media screen,
@media handheld, @media print, etc., eg:

@media screen /* for browsers */
{
body {font-size:95%}
}

@media handheld
{
body {font-size:100%}
}

@media print
{
body {font-size:10pt}
#nav {display:none}
}

What's the code for detecting whether it's PDA or PC in order
to change the font size and page size accordingly?

As others have said, look at the UA string. You might want to see if
you can find a simulator. There is a phone simulator from Openwave that
can get you started.

 

[Dooza]

I have a Web application that is written in ASP. It runs well on regular PC.
What is needed to make it run on PDA (wireless)? I want to buy a new PDA to
test the application. Is there a particular brand of PDA or operating system
that I should buy? Thanks.

I have done this before, we have mobile 2006 PDAs that run IE, my ASP
applications (for stock takes as the PDAs have barcode scanners) work
very well on this platform.

I make the page the right size for the PDAs, but could have used a
different CSS file for it if I wanted to use on normal PCs.

The application also logs onto the local domain to pass the user into
the application. That works well too.

Steve

 

[Evertjan.]

Adrienne Boswell wrote on 17 jun 2008 in
microsoft.public.inetserver.asp.general:

ASP knows nothing about the client, whether it's a browser, PDA, phone,
or refrigerator.

Use ASAP:

<% Mail = "More Ice, ASAP!"%>
<a href='mailto:refrigerator@me?subject=<%=Mail%>&body=<%=Mail%>'>
Hot, hot!</a>

 

[Evertjan.]

Adrienne Boswell wrote on 17 jun 2008 in
microsoft.public.inetserver.asp.general:

@media handheld
{
body {font-size:100%}
}

Seems to be working according to:
<http://www.codestyle.org/css/media/handheld-BrowserSummary.shtml>

Anyone with practical experience?

 

[displayname]

Thank you all for replying. Let me see if I understand you correctly.

Use request.ServerVariables("HTTP_USER_AGENT") to determine the kind of
client.
If the client is PDA, then use the @media handheld {body {font-size:100%}}
style
to display a smaller font size.
If the client is PC, then use @media screen {body {font-size:95%}} style for
bigger font size.

Shouldn't the font size for PDA be 95% (for smaller font) and for PC be 100%
(for bigger font)?

I thought the user agent only lets you know whether it's "Mozilla/2.0" or IE
kind of information. It doesn't tell you whether the client is PDA or PC
which I need to know.

I have done this before, we have mobile 2006 PDAs that run IE, my ASP
applications (for stock takes as the PDAs have barcode scanners) work
very well on this platform.

So PDA can have IE, that's good.

I make the page the right size for the PDAs, but could have used a
different CSS file for it if I wanted to use on normal PCs.

So you do change the font size for the PDA.

The application also logs onto the local domain to pass the user into
the application. That works well too.

That sounds like I need to do something additional to make the ASP
application pass the user into the app? I thought everyone else said I
wouldn't have to change any thing and the app would run on any client (like
PDA) because ASP runs on the server. My app uses IIS with Integrated
authentication. IIS authenticates the user passes the user id to the app. I
want it to continue doing the same thing in PDA. Do I need to change any
thing?

I have one more question regarding wireless network for the PDA. Do I need
to have a port open on the app server or on the wireless network to allow the
app to run on the PDA wirelessly? I've never worked with wireless nor PDA and
have no clue how things work in that environment.

 

[Dooza]

Thank you all for replying. Let me see if I understand you correctly.

Use request.ServerVariables("HTTP_USER_AGENT") to determine the kind of
client.
If the client is PDA, then use the @media handheld {body {font-size:100%}}
style

You don't need to detect the user agent string, just use:

<LINK rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="handheld" href="handheld.css">
<LINK rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="screen.css">

http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/media.html

Steve

 

[Daniel Crichton]

displayname wrote on Tue, 17 Jun 2008 07:45:01 -0700:

I thought the user agent only lets you know whether it's "Mozilla/2.0"
or IE kind of information. It doesn't tell you whether the client is
PDA or PC which I need to know.

The User Agent often contains a lot more info than just the browser version.
eg.

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.0.3705;
..NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.30; .NET CLR
3.0.04506.648)

This is the UA string my browser sends. You can see from it that I'm running
IE7 on Windows XP (NT 5.1 = XP), and have .NET 1.0, 1.1, 2.0, and 3.0
installed.

Here's a page listing a large number of known PDA/mobile device UA strings:

http://www.zytrax.com/tech/web/mobile_ids.html


For instance, this one:

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Windows CE; PPC; 240x320)

which is running Windows Mobile (Windows CE = Windows Mobile = PocketPC)
using IE4.01, and has a screen resolution of 240x320 pixels.