Question

I’ve managed to develop some code in php which would use a mobile template instead of the default one, however I’m not sure if I should redirect to a mobile URL (such as /mobile/) or if it’s ok to just have the mobile template showing up instead of the default.

Any thoughts on this?

Answer 1

This is up to you.

Some sites put there mobile view on its own domain, e.g., m.yourdomain.com or yourdomain.mobi, and if a mobile user arrives at your non-mobile site (and are detected via agent-string) they’ll be redirected to the mobile domain.

However, Tim Berner-Lee states:

It is fundamentally useful to be able
to quote the URI for some information
and then look up that URI in an
entirely different context. For
example, I may want to look up a
restaurant on my laptop, bookmark it,
and then, when I only have my phone,
check the bookmark to have a look at
the evening menu. Or, my travel agent
may send me a pointer to my itinerary
for a business trip. I may view the
itinerary from my office on a large
screen and want to see the map, or I
may view it at the airport from my
phone when all I want is the gate
number.

There’s something to that. This seems to prefer a non-redirection approach but, instead, detecting the agent type and displaying the appropriate view.

Which approach is better is up for debate.

You could combine the approaches by having your main site respond with views based on agent type while also placing content in a mobile-specific domain (not duplicating it, just mapping the additional domain to it), which will allow phones that don’t send a mobile user agent string to view the lighter mobile site.