[thelist] CSS & PDA's - Now I am Confused...

[Brian W. Reaves]

Anyone care to point me towards some useful info about web page design 
for PDA's, how they are rendered, what CSS is used?

The Short:
Looking for the limitations of PDA's rendering web sites (Palm OS & WIN).
How does one develop sites for version 4 browsers keeping PDA's in mind?
What is Opera's 7+ PDA Tool used for (Shift-F11)?


The Long:
I recently completed a project (http://spiralwinder.com/) expecting it 
to be accessible and thus readable on PDA's. I viewed the site regularly 
during development using Opera 7+ Shift-F11 tool. (Works great there!) 
However, I don't own a PDA so I didn't know how an actual PDA's 
rendering was going to be any different. That was until I took a trip to 
a local electronics's store to view the site on a Palm (The Windows OS 
PDA's didn't have Wi-Fi). What a let down! On Opera, the positioning in 
my CSS1 file didn't render, but on the Palm it did... incorrectly. It's 
not pretty! In fact you can't scroll all the way to the left to read the 
left edge of the content.

I separated my CSS1 and my CSS2 to allow version 4 browsers like NS to 
render some positioning. The client still uses NS4 and a large segment 
of his users do too, because his is a sales rep for Central & South 
America with his product line. So I had to keep all of them in mind as I 
worked.

Now it looks like I have had this all wrong, but how does one develop 
for Palm PDA users, NS 4 users & use CSS instead of tables?

Can someone tell me if the Win OS PDA gives yet another rendering? I 
have heard that the T-Mobile "Sidekick" does use another rendering tool, 
do any of you have one of those? And what the heck is the Opera 7+ tool for?

Just when I thought I had something figured out, I am now more confused 
than before I started.

So, I thought I would go back to the electronics store and view some 
better know developers sites. See if they rendered any better then take 
a look at their code to learn. Surely they have it right! Well i don't 
know if they do or not because when I went to A List Apart 
(http://www.alistapart.com/) it rendered the same as mind did; on Opera 
7+ & on the Palm PDA. Geesh!

So does this mean Zeldman has his site wrong too? Or was I using a bad 
Palm PDA with a bad browser install? His site rendered the same as mine 
on Opera 7+ tool.

Perhaps this is where WAP comes in, which means I have yet ANOTHER 
language to learn. If so I find it hard to believe one can't build for 
multiple platforms without having to build the site more than once. And 
worst have to do it each time something is added/edited/deleted from a site.

Your wisdom please!

TIA,
-- 

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Brian W. Reaves
http://BrianReaves.com