rtroxel — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 19:02:57 +0000

you can provide alternate css sheets for different devices.

I picked up an interesting book on CSS, "Bulletproof Web Design" by Dan Cederholm. It has a lot of information on using CSS coding to pick up the speed of your site, without sacrificing content. I've tested some of the code, and it does seem to work, but this whole experience is still a learning curve for me!

Neutron2k — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 14:39:04 +0000

you can provide alternate css sheets for different devices. I wrote an article on this at http://www.n2kdesign.co.uk/viewarticle.aspx?aID=31, altough this article needs to be updated for the newer handheld stylesheet media attribute for handheld and a few others.

maybe that should be my next article

I also wrote an article on pda sites:

http://www.n2kdesign.co.uk/viewarticle.aspx?aID=25

rtroxel — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 02:22:53 +0000

Try Opera's small screen view mode

Yes. I downloaded Opera 9 and checked out the 2 sites in that mode. Actually, they don't look bad. I'm going to add some music and see (hear) what that is like.

Thanks again.

BTW: Adobe Illustrator does a great job of minimizing photos for the Web.

andy206uk — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 01:38:53 +0000

Megan;210555 wrote:

Try Opera's small screen view mode to see what it will look like on a mobile device. You could even recommend that people use Opera mini if they can. I've heard that it's much, much better than other mobile browsers which often have trouble displaying stuff and have really slow rendering speeds.

Totally agree on that one. I use it on my k750i and it's the best mobile browser I've ever used.

rtroxel — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 19:06:52 +0000

Thank you. I'll begin with CSS.

Megan — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 17:30:54 +0000

You could also put the multimedia stuff in a separate section that people would have the choice to view them or not.

A few more tips:

check out Cameron Moll's site - he does a lot of work with mobile web design. He is coming out with a book soon.
use alternate stylesheets for mobile devices. This can solve a lot of your problems, although I think they will still try to download multimedia content even if you're hiding it using CSS
Try Opera's small screen view mode to see what it will look like on a mobile device. You could even recommend that people use Opera mini if they can. I've heard that it's much, much better than other mobile browsers which often have trouble displaying stuff and have really slow rendering speeds.

Arch — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 17:02:39 +0000

Like the previous poster said, CSS might be the best option. Also, you might want to look at browser detection scripts and codes and determine if they're on a PDA/mobile device or not. It's not the best option, though. Lastly, maybe have images and music be viewed as an option, like [Click here to view this user's image].

rtroxel — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 16:36:04 +0000

Is there a message forum on your site?

I can't direct you to my site, because it's built for my college alumni group. There is a feedback page, as well as other information from my fellow alums. They are the only people who visit the site, and some of them want a lot of pictures and music, but I'm reluctant to provide these things, because of bandwidth limitations.

Arch — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 16:00:56 +0000

Is there a message forum on your site?

demonhale — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 01:12:58 +0000

andy is right, use css, or at least use two css, make a subdomain for small screens like if for example I have a site demonhale.com, my for small screen site would either be on the subdomains wap.demonhale.com or mobile.demonhale.com , then just use a style sheet with less images... That would pretty much do the trick... Remember you can always use multiple stylesheets...