Mobile redirection

[Pherogab]

Hi,

What would be the best practice for mobile detection:

• Best practice for redirections
• Best practice for detection and inclusion of a front-end element inviting to a mobile version of the site

I found this on www.W3C.org but it's from 2008 and I was wondering if any of you tried different approaches concerning mobile detection.

Thanks!

GaB

[KaneJamison]

If it's a normal website, not something dynamic that requires HTML5 / app-style functionality, then the best practice in my opinion is to display a different stylesheet based upon device (screen size, basically). This avoids duplicate content issues, rel canonical implementation, and page authority getting split between normal & mobile versions of the site.

Check out this article from Smashing Magazine regarding designing for mobile:

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/11/03/how-to-build-a-mobile-website/#mobile-stylesheets

The section marked "CLIENT-SIDE METHODS & MEDIA QUERIES" explains how to do it, it's basically paraphrasing the original article on A List Apart.

[wattssw]

This site should help you: detectmobilebrowsers.com