Archive for 'Tech'
Wednesday, 29th October 2008
More on Mobile sites
I was left a comment on a previous post about mobile sites about how to make a site for Nokia 6610.
Well rather than leaving a long comment, I thought a follow up post would be easier for me to write!
So to answer the comment, mowser is a good place to start and those sites should open on a Nokia 6610. And you could use a meta link as stated in the original post.
The people who run mowser also run these two sites:
http://ready.mobi/
http://mobiforge.com/
which can also help you get a mobile site going.
Since I wrote the post, I’ve actually made a custom mobile site for my church, Minehead Baptist Church at http://m.minehead-baptist.com
Please feel free to ‘borrow’ any of the html/css if you like (but not the logo cos that’s copyrighted!!!)
It’s got basic into on and loads really nicely on mobile devises and iPhones! I was inspired to make it by this post on digital.leadnet.
Some of the sites on the digital.leadnet post auto detected if you’re on a mobile devise and I wanted a way of doing that with my Church site as well! So after a google I found:
http://www.brainhandles.com/2007/10/15/detecting-mobile-browsers/
which gave me a nice php script.
If your site uses php, just pop it in at the top of the page (above the doctype) and tada it works! My church site is run on wordpress, so I put it in at the top of the wp header.php template file.
So the full php code I’m using is:
<?php
if(checkmobile()) header(”Location:http://m.minehead-baptist.com”);
function checkmobile(){
if(isset($_SERVER["HTTP_X_WAP_PROFILE"])) return true;
if(preg_match(”/wap\.|\.wap/i”,$_SERVER["HTTP_ACCEPT"])) return true;
if(isset($_SERVER["HTTP_USER_AGENT"])){
$uamatches = array(”midp”, “j2me”, “avantg”, “docomo”, “novarra”, “palmos”, “palmsource”, “240×320″, “opwv”, “chtml”, “pda”, “windows\ ce”, “mmp\/”, “blackberry”, “mib\/”, “symbian”, “wireless”, “nokia”, “hand”, “mobi”, “phone”, “cdm”, “up\.b”, “audio”, “SIE\-”, “SEC\-”, “samsung”, “HTC”, “mot\-”, “mitsu”, “sagem”, “sony”, “alcatel”, “lg”, “erics”, “vx”, “NEC”, “philips”, “mmm”, “xx”, “panasonic”, “sharp”, “wap”, “sch”, “rover”, “pocket”, “benq”, “java”, “pt”, “pg”, “vox”, “amoi”, “bird”, “compal”, “kg”, “voda”, “sany”, “kdd”, “dbt”, “sendo”, “sgh”, “gradi”, “jb”, “\d\d\di”, “moto”);
foreach($uamatches as $uastring){
if(preg_match(”/”.$uastring.”/i”,$_SERVER["HTTP_USER_AGENT"])) return true;
}
}
return false;
}
?>
I’ve also found that on the iPhone, if you give links to feeds (I’ve got feedburner ones for the church), it opens/reads them nicely and you can even listen to mp3/podcast content straight on the iPhone!
by james in Tech, Work, html & css | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, 20th August 2008
making mobile sites
With the growing market in mobile/handheld devises it seems to be getting more important then ever to make your sites mobile friendly.
I first got interested after reading this: http://healyourchurchwebsite.com/2008/06/23/if-the-olympics-are-going-mobile-then-why-not-your-church-website/
As part of the re-vamp of whychristmas?com, I’ve just got a mobile version going using ‘mowser‘. I’d looked at a few options and mowser seems really nice. mowser is a site/browser for ‘handheld’ devices and can turn any existing site into a more handheld/mobile friendly one. (just enter a url and hit go)
So the mobile version of whychristmas?com would be at: http://mowser.com/web/www.whychristmas.com
However, to make it easier for handheld browsers to find it, you can add a simple line in the <head> section like:
<link rel=”alternate” type=”text/html” media=”handheld” href=”http://m.whychristmas.com/” title=”Mobile/PDA Version” />
And tada, a mobile friendly site!!!
You’ll see that in the line above, the url is to: http://m.whychristmas.com to be posh(!), I’ve set-up a sub domain in cpanel (m) and set it to redirect to the mowser address. Doing that means the ‘mobile version’ link in the footer of the site looks like it’s coming from the main whyc site, so a bit nicer…
And if you use wordpress, there’s this plugin: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/mowser-wordpress-mobile/ which does all the work for you!
I’ve used the wp plugin on the whychristmas blog and my church site (as it’s run in wp…) and of course this blog!!! and I think it will be one of the ‘must install’ plugins on a wp site.
With the boom in handhelds/smartphones, etc. this seems to be a really quick (and easy) way of making sure sites are good on them as well!
by james in Tech, Work, html & css | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, 22nd April 2008
Oh Preview!
Having recently made the jump from PC to Mac, the one program I really missed was Picasa (I have parallels and can run it from there - but it takes a while…).
I’m sure many know the fab new ‘basic’ image tools in 10.5 preview - but I’ve just found them and, well cool! Basic resize, crop and colour adjustments all within preview, a great little time saver.
More at:
http://www.macworld.com/article/132468/2008/04/workingmac2504.html
http://www.macosxtips.co.uk/index_files/13-things-you-didnt-know-about-preview.html
by james in Any Other Business, Tech | No Comments »
Friday, 14th September 2007
wordpress stats pt2
In a previous post, I talked about quick stats. My new wordpress stat plugin of choice is Counterize II.
It gives good simple bar graphs and you can control who much of what is shown on the page! It also pops a nice little ‘hits’ box on the dashboard.
by james in Tech, Work | No Comments »
Friday, 14th September 2007
songbird, from the guys behind winamp …
… with some good stuff by mozilla/vlc/lots of other clever people!
I was installing this: http://userstyles.org/styles/2318 in FF this morning (and wow it’s nice, makes google reader even better 
and saw in the list of supported programs ‘songbird‘. Not heard of that I thought. A new things from mozilla?! So after a google I found: http://songbirdnest.com/ and even though it’s still in developer build, it looks very impressive.
Imported my itunes library (except things from the itunes store) great, found all the vids on my system (in all formats but doesn’t seem to like flv at the mo) and plays things very nicely. And it’s SO FAST! There’s no lag at all when clicking to play videos or music.
And having surfing as built in (but using a decent browser) is also great. Think of it like having firefox, itunes and divx in one program! I’ve not tried the ipod support yet…
Once this gets into a fully working program, I think it’s gonna turn a lot of heads!
by james in Any Other Business, Tech | No Comments »
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