A taste of the future - Web 3.0 and Drupal 6.0

Having the site look differently on different devices is built into css. Have well formed xhml and than couple that with css.

For code you want to display something for print your css include should look something like:
<style type="text/css" media="print">@import "/themes/yourtheme/print.css";</style>

For handhelds:
<style type="text/css" media="handheld">@import "/themes/yourtheme/handheld.css";</style>

You can check out all of the media types over at http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/media.html

So, you can have build a handheld friendly site in drupal 4.7 if you want.

It would be interesting to have a way to present a mobile version of a site. But a mobile version seems to need different information than the standard version.

The css above is one way of doing it, but may not be optimal.

The most fool proof way to make Drupal look its best on handhelds is to have a custom cut down theme which does not have left or right columns, and navigation at the top or bottom.

This can be achieved via several ways:

- Use the browser information to detect a handheld (there are libraries that does that in PHP), and then make the active theme (via $custom_theme global) be the handlheld specific theme.

- Add an explicit "Browse from a handheld" link that does the same.

You can also use services that reformat sites for you, like http://www.google.com/m, but it is not as good as optimized solutions.
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Drupal development and customization: 2bits.com
Personal: Baheyeldin.com

Apple's cellphone will not be an iPhone because a couple of companies are already using iPhone.
Apple's cellphone will not even be a computer because they are rebranding a common Japanese cellphone/MP3 player that was to be released as a Vodaphone.

We should look to the current generation of pcp ( pocket computer cellphone) for direction.

My pcp is already a couple of years old and obsolete. The first generation ran Linux and Windows, have 2GB storage through SD cards and display at 240 * 320 pixels. Apple has not yet worked out how to put a memory card slot in an MP3 player or a decent size display.

The second generation have FM radio and other stuff that has been around for so long that I cannot be bothered upgrading because the third generation is around the corner.

The third generation pcp will have SDHC which means 4GB and then 8GB SD cards. A smart operator, a computer company, will use 2 SDHC slots with one as the system disk and one as the removable data disk. The phone companies will ignore this opportunity because they are going mini SD and then micro SD, smaller, not better.

There are already several screen sizes available in pocket PCs. When the pcp spreads across those screen sizes, your Web site will have to handle several small screen sizes. The Japanese have done this forever. Instead of wasting time on WAP, they simply added the Internet to their phones. Minor simplifications to HTML gave them a small light browser that fitted existing phones. The average Japanese commuter train has more people using the normal Internet through cellphones than the whole world has WAP users.

Some things you need for pcp:

• Test with Opera which is on some pcps
• Test with the cut down Internet Explorer which is on many pcps.
• Test with specific screen sizes including 240 * 320.
• pcps can use their screen in portrait or landscape with means both 240 * 320 and 320 * 240.
• Image upload should automatically create thumbnail plus 240 * 320 image, 320 * 240 image etc.
• When you insert an image in a regular page, automatically replace with thumbnail for pcp. Automatically link to a full screen image in exact size for the pcp.
• Give people the option to use images highly compressed for poor quality screen on cheap pcps. Only 65K colour on some and 256K colour on others, no true 24M colour. They are paying through the nose for each byte so give them the minimum colour depth for their pcp.
• Some pcps play music but some play only MP3 and many people use cheap nasty earphones, like the iPod ones, that do not reproduce the full range of sounds from MP3. Give your users the choice of format for music and, if they choose MP3, the choice of bitrates so they can minimise their download cost and storage size to match the junky earphones.

I did not bother using my pcp with the Internet because the sites I like do not do the above transformations and, if they did, the images would not be worth looking at. Even the second rate images on IMDB are hard to look at. Is that Samuel L. Jackson or Angelina Jolie? My next PCP will have a better display but most people will be buying their first pcp and be conned into buying something with a second rate screen.

You want your Web site to minimise and resize.

petermoulding.com/web_architect