Re: routing based on browser width

pharrington
Sun, 06 Sep 2009 14:09:50 -0000

On Sep 6, 12:51 am, dansinker
<dansin...-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
> I have a site that''s directed toward mobile use. As a result, the
> basic structure consists of pages that render exclusively on mobile
> devices, and then corresponding pages for desktop browsers that
> explain that they need to come back on a mobile device.
>
> Currently, I''m using Javascript on the mobile page to detect
browser
> width and then it redirects to the desktop page if it''s above
480px
> wide.
>
> That works fine, but it''s less than perfect when people link or
> bookmark the desktop page, it never redirects back to the mobile one.
> And, it seems to be less than perfect for search engines as well.
>
> Here''s what I''ve got now:
>
> index.rhtml renders first and tosses this Javascript at it:
>
> {       winWidth=document.all?document.body.clientWidth:window.innerWidth;
>         if (winWidth > 481)
>         location="<%= url_for({:controller =>
''info'', :action =>
> ''share_welcome'', :id => @story, :only_path =>
false, :protocol =>
> ''http://''}) %>"
>         }
>
> So you can see, it directs browsers over a certain width to, in this
> case, share_welcome.rhtml
>
> So, in a desktop browser, the index page looks like mysite.com/
> share_welcome, while a mobile browser just sees mysite.com
>
> There''s *got* to be a way to route this browser width logic ahead
of
> page load so that it''s always mysite.com no matter what, right?
>
> Is it possible to build this into routes.rb somehow?
>
> I''m stumped. Any ideas?
>
> Thanks so much!
>
> Dan

My browser (Firefox 3.5) does not send browser width-at-the-time
information in the request headers. I doubt any browsers do, so you
can''t use this in any sort of routes or respond_to shinanagins.

If you need your application to perform differently depending on
different user agents, you need to relay on the User-Agent header.
This will of course require some research to find the UA''s that your
app needs to consider as mobile devices, and be ready to respond to
user feedback when someone browses with a UA you did not anticipate.