I want to make my first mobile-friendly website and I’m seeing lots of choices: server-side detection of user-agent strings; client-side “media type” detection in the CSS; letting the user decide explicitly; also choices about whether to use HTML -vs- XML, or even specialized stuff like WML/WAP.
Since I only care about current mainstream Droid phones and iPhones and I’m just beginning with this stuff what’s a good way to start off?
Developing alternate sites is a big job, so only worth it if it’s a big site and there’s a lot of $$$ involved. Browser sniffing is not well regarded these days. Using CSS3 media queries is a nice option for iPhone (but I’m not sure about Droid).
There is a fairly recent argument that the best approach is to make a clean, simple site with basic styling, and feed special media styles to devices that can handle them, like iPhone and modern desktop browsers. It’s an interesting argument.