I’d like to have a website that I am designing be able to determine what browser a user has, and redirect to a specific page or CSS. How can I do this- any ideas? Thanks in advance.
TB
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You need a Browser Sniffer - see
https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Browser_Detection_and_Cross_Browser_Support
for an insight
David
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On 3 Apr 2009, at 08:42, DeltaDave wrote:
You need a Browser Sniffer - see
https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Browser_Detection_and_Cross_Browser_Support
for an insight
I took a look out of interest and noted this author’s comment:
“If only all browsers were as good as Gecko and Internet Explorer 6,
then my job would be so much easier!”
How things have changed since the article’s dateline: Feb 2003!
(:-o) Colin
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Could this be helpful?
http://www.tvidesign.co.uk/blog/CSS-Browser-detection-using-jQuery-instead-of-hacks.aspx
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I’d like to make the counter-question: Why?
Seriously, there are some reasons to do this, and they seem reasonable
at the time, but they lead down a never-ending spiral of hacks and
counter-hacks, and will end you up with a maintenance nightmare. I
lived through several iterations of this idea back in the late 90’s,
when it was still popular.
Current thinking is to build a site to the W3C standards, and then add
conditional comments to add CSS that forces IE to believe in the
standards, or JavaScript for the really stubborn cases. And for the
really hard-luck cases, you simply make sure that the finished site is
readable (as in maybe a ransom note can be readable) but nothing
more.
Can you explain briefly what you are trying to accomplish by making
special sites for different browsers?
There are other ways to ensure that your site “works” for people,
sometimes the correct way to make it work is to explain that the
visitor really must upgrade.
Walter
On Apr 2, 2009, at 10:00 PM, twb716 wrote:
I’d like to have a website that I am designing be able to determine
what browser a user has, and redirect to a specific page or CSS. How
can I do this- any ideas? Thanks in advance.
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Sometime around 3/4/09 (at 08:55 +0100) Colin Alcock said:
How things have changed since the article’s dateline: Feb 2003!
IE6 stunk from the moment it launched. The author must have been high.
k
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Thanks for the responses, everyone.
As to this:
“I’d like to make the counter-question: Why?”
We have Flash elements on the page, which won’t show on things like iPhones and other PDA’s, so I’d like to have a version that doesn’t have the Flash elements that people will see when they are accessing the site via one of these devices.
Also, there will be a client area, where people will be able to login to view/pay invoices, etc. that will need to have the login page fit to a small screen size.
I was thinking of having a redirect to a page such as mobile.website.net or similar.
Thanks again.
TB
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On 3 Apr 2009, at 16:04, twb716 wrote:
so I’d like to have a version that doesn’t have the Flash elements
that people will see when they are accessing the site via one of
these devices
That’s fair enough, but I regularly surf using Safari with plug-ins
turned off?
Do I get redirected, or does the site simply break?
;o)
Heather
PS I surf with plug-ins off because Flash content annoys the pants off
me with its memory and bandwidth hogging.
^-^
http://www.flickr.com/photos/snaptophobic/
iFlickr
http://gallery.me.com/heatherkay#gallery
A growing collection of personal pixels
http://snaptophobia.blogspot.com/
Blather and bluster about photography
¬_¬
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Freeway will already give you the Flash/alternate behavior for free,
without you making another site for that. As to the mobile view being
a separate domain, that’s an interesting idea. The way to manage that
would be to have a separate domain, as you note, but rather than
switching automatically (and taking control away from the visitor)
another approach is simply to add a link to the header or footer that
takes you there. If you want to get fancy, you could set a special
style on that link which would make it really bold on an iPhone, but
nearly invisible elsewhere. (I’d have to look around for that, but I
believe I read somewhere a combination of @media tags you could add to
your CSS that would act as a “notch filter” for iPhone.)
Walter
On Apr 3, 2009, at 11:04 AM, twb716 wrote:
Thanks for the responses, everyone.
As to this:“I’d like to make the counter-question: Why?”
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On Apr 3, 2009, at 8:15 AM, Heather Kavanagh wrote:
I surf with plug-ins off because Flash content annoys the pants off me
with its memory and bandwidth hogging.
I couldn’t agree more! Flash is only slightly less annoying than music
playing on a website. I’m inclined to go into a major rant here, but
I’ll practice some restraint instead. : )
Richard
Richard Houston
Architectural Art
http://www.richardhoustonart.com
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Walter; Amen and thank you.
On Apr 3, 2009, at 8:29 AM, Walter Lee Davis wrote:
I’d like to make the counter-question: Why?
Seriously, there are some reasons to do this, and they seem
reasonable at the time, but they lead down a never-ending spiral of
hacks and counter-hacks, and will end you up with a maintenance
nightmare. I lived through several iterations of this idea back in
the late 90’s, when it was still popular.Current thinking is to build a site to the W3C standards, and then
add conditional comments to add CSS that forces IE to believe in the
standards, or JavaScript for the really stubborn cases. And for the
really hard-luck cases, you simply make sure that the finished site
is readable (as in maybe a ransom note can be readable) but
nothing more.Can you explain briefly what you are trying to accomplish by making
special sites for different browsers?There are other ways to ensure that your site “works” for people,
sometimes the correct way to make it work is to explain that the
visitor really must upgrade.Walter
On Apr 2, 2009, at 10:00 PM, twb716 wrote:
I’d like to have a website that I am designing be able to determine
what browser a user has, and redirect to a specific page or CSS.
How can I do this- any ideas? Thanks in advance.
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Americans elected Democrats to hold a 58-seat majority in the Senate,
and yet, the majority party will struggle to pass it’s agenda – a
popular agenda, mind you – because of Republican obstructionism, and
Democrats who prefer to drive with their foot on the brake.
Dave Cox
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I agree with you whole hardily.
so what do you say to a client that that want flash and bling?
and (I know this had been asked before) what is our options to have
the same “look” as flash with out the headaches?
J:)
On Apr 3, 2009, at 11:39 AM, Richard Houston wrote:
On Apr 3, 2009, at 8:15 AM, Heather Kavanagh wrote:
I surf with plug-ins off because Flash content annoys the pants off
me with its memory and bandwidth hogging.I couldn’t agree more! Flash is only slightly less annoying than
music playing on a website. I’m inclined to go into a major rant
here, but I’ll practice some restraint instead. : )Richard
Richard Houston
Architectural Art
http://www.richardhoustonart.com
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On 3 Apr 2009, at 19:40, Julie Maxwell Allen wrote:
so what do you say to a client that that want flash and bling?
Well, in my case, since I don’t have a copy of Flash any more, I tend
to steer them away with the old “it’s not that accessible for disabled
visitors” argument. Most times, they accept that and we move on.
A lot of what Flash gets used for - fancy menu systems, for example -
can be replicated in many ways using JavaScript these days.
I don’t object to Flash overall. It can be used in exciting ways to
enhance a web site, and for video content and so on. I do object to
its random and arbitrary use for buttons (especially when there’s
often a simpler and more elegant way to do the same thing without
Flash), and the proliferation of advertising. Flash content for much
of the latter is unnecessary, and even more annoying when it looms out
over your browser window if you accidentally move your mouse near it.
I used to think Flash was great, but I quickly lost the enthusiasm
after vainly trying to master the application over several years!
Heather
^-^
http://www.flickr.com/photos/snaptophobic/
iFlickr
http://gallery.me.com/heatherkay#gallery
A growing collection of personal pixels
http://snaptophobia.blogspot.com/
Blather and bluster about photography
¬_¬
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If they want capital-F Flash, I point out to them that Google can’t
read it. Usually that trumps the need for visual effects that scare
Heather away.
If they want little-f flash, then I can turn to the large bag of
tricks in script.aculo.us – the JavaScript effects engine used in
Freeway and lots of WebTwoOh sites. It’s not for the faint of heart –
at least once you get out of the safety of the Attention FX Action and
its friends. But really, there are very few visual effects that you
might reach for Flash to do that you couldn’t do in Scripty (as it’s
known to its friends). The benefit of that approach is that if I think
about what I’m doing, the resulting site might still make sense to a
blind visitor (like Google) and not discriminate the way “noisy
pictures” do.
Walter
On Apr 3, 2009, at 2:40 PM, Julie Maxwell Allen wrote:
so what do you say to a client that that want flash and bling?
and (I know this had been asked before) what is our options to have
the same “look” as flash with out the headaches?J:)
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Trying to get back on track here, it’s interesting that Google was mentioned so many times in this post, since Google is the site that gave me the idea for having a mobile version. If you have a PDA and go to www.google.com, it automatically redirects you to the “mobile” CSS version.
By the way- Google does search Flash, in a way. If you write your Flash to rely on XML scripts for it’s content, for example, Google will scan for that.
There are also many other things that Google is now using to run accurate searching, such as how many other sites link to you, or your content, and how frequently your content is updated.
TB
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All true, but Google (and all other search engines) really live and
die by the CONTENT of your page. When you put that content into Flash,
you might as well spray paint it on your site – it’s not actually
text any more, and therefore not content as Google (or any other blind
visitor) might see it.
Walter
On Apr 3, 2009, at 7:58 PM, twb716 wrote:
There are also many other things that Google is now using to run
accurate searching, such as how many other sites link to you, or
your content, and how frequently your content is updated.
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On Apr 4, 2009, at 9:51 AM, Walter Lee Davis wrote:
you might as well spray paint it on your site…
That’s funny.
Richard
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Walter,
Flash is usually used to make some sort of slide show on a page to highlight pictures/words in a limited amount of space.
So I’m thinking… the script.aculo.us slideshow effects could easily do a similar thing. A Freeway sideshow using show/hide layers with searchable text and links in said layers making it all very Google friendly 
Does Google see the whole div even though its hidden at some point using script.aculo.us?
Or has Google worked this out as a cheat, thinking further… you could easily have a permanent hidden layer choc a block full or searchable text?
On 4 Apr 2009, 4:51 pm, waltd wrote:
All true, but Google (and all other search engines) really live and
die by the CONTENT of your page.
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What you are describing is the Carousel effect, and that does show
everything if JavaScript is off, which is also how Google sees the
world.
The trick with any of this is to make the page one giant page full of
information. Then, at page load, you twist that giant page into
several subsets of that information which you can glide through.
Google does ignore things that are set to hidden with CSS, but it does
not run JavaScript on the page. So by setting the hidden property
after the page loads, through JavaScript, you have a page where Google
sees everything in one whack, and humans with JavaScript see 1/Nth of
the page at a time, with a groovy animation between Nths.
Walter
On Apr 5, 2009, at 7:57 AM, WebWorker wrote:
Walter,
Flash is usually used to make some sort of slide show on a page to
highlight pictures/words in a limited amount of space.So I’m thinking… the script.aculo.us slideshow effects could
easily do a similar thing. A Freeway sideshow using show/hide layers
with searchable text and links in said layers making it all very
Google friendlyDoes Google see the whole div even though its hidden at some point
using script.aculo.us?Or has Google worked this out as a cheat, thinking further… you
could easily have a permanent hidden layer choc a block full or
searchable text?On 4 Apr 2009, 4:51 pm, waltd wrote:
All true, but Google (and all other search engines) really live and
die by the CONTENT of your page.
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No not the Carousel.
I was meaning the ‘Target show/hide layer’ effect as here http://www.softpress.com/products/scriptaculous.php driven by a sequence timer.
Create a slide show, but not with pictures only, but with divs that contains for example, a picture and some search-able text and even hyperlinks to other pages.
Does Google see the text (and links) in “each” div using in a slide show like this?
On 5 Apr 2009, 12:58 pm, waltd wrote:
What you are describing is the Carousel effect
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