User agents for mobile site, domain changing

Question

I have a mobile site and I'd like to redirect users to the domain.mobi or mobile.subdomain (we have both setup)

1. How do I determine a mobile browser
2. Is it bad practice to have the mobile site on a different domain or subdomain?

Answer 1

1. How do I determine a mobile browser

Here's some javascript that will do the job: http://www.quirksmode.org/js/detect.html

2. Is it bad practice to have the mobile site on a different domain or subdomain?

It's good practice, and a popular convention is to use http://m.yoursite.com for mobile if your main url is http://yoursite.com

Noah

Answer 2

It isn't bad practice. I appreciate when sites do this -- and I like it if they include a link for me to get to the real site if I want.

I found this list in google -- there are other hits if you search for them

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

Answer 3

There are a number of solutions for determining mobile browsers. Most use the UserAgent making the request but some solutions use other factors as well.

Try looking at:

WURFL

MDBF

DeviceAtlas

DetectRight

Volantis

MobileAware

Movila

UAProf