boardom

[Gadget Girl]

This link: http://www.scriptygoddess.com/archives/001492.php shows how to make a PDA page so people can read your blog on the go. Anyone ever done this with b2 and can it be done?

Sara

[kenahora]

I'm hardly an expert and can't claim to have done this specifically for PDAs, but it seems to me a relatively easy CSS kinda thing. I use a PHP style switcher similar to that described here -> http://www.alistapart.com/stories/phpswitch/ (and ably commented upon by michel himself.) For debugging purposes I have a blank style sheet called none.css to see what things look like for users of older browsers. That should achieve roughly the same effect as the MT hack you linked to. In fact, if you've properly separated your content and layout and the first commenter in that link is correct that most PDAs ignore CSS altogether (I have no idea, don't follow that stuff) then you shouldn't have to do anything at all. You can of course take advantage of the various media types defined in CSS2 if you desire something fancier.

K

[Gadget Girl]

Thanks for the reply, K! I'm finally getting the time to do this!

Sara

[Gadget Girl]

Well, I'm stumped. I use skins and I have separated the blog, index and nav. I have made a new .css, but I don't know how to tie them all together? I made a new page called pda.php and put it in my blog directory, but, I don't know what to put in for the code? I tried the b2 loop, starting with content...I'm missing something I know I am.

Help??!! Please??

Sara

[alex_t_king]

In my opinion - and I actaully use a wireless PDA for browsing - this example URL is NOT a good pda version of a blog. The page size is 45k, plus another 700k or so of images. A successful PDA page shouldn't be larger than 10k and ideally should be 2-5k.

I think a proper PDA version of a blog would show the current entry, plus the titles of the last 10-20 entries as links to those entries. Having a previous/next link would work well too. I guess comments should be inline on the page as well.

I've been considering creating a PDA version of my blog, maybe this will get me off my tail to work on it. If I do so, I'll post it... Probably just using the stripped version of the blog that comes in the archive is a good start if you want to make something handheld/PDA friendly without a lot of work.
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[alex_t_king]

I've made the first version of my crack at this available on my site.

Tested it on 4 different PalmOS browsers - I'll have some friends with other PDAs test it out when I can - worked fine for me.

I think I should add the following features:

- An override link to let mobile users choose to view the main blog instead of the mobile version if they choose to (if you are using the auto-redirect function)
- Add Next/Previous Post links
- Make full list of blog posts available, 10-20 at a time in chronological order
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[Gadget Girl]

Wow, thanks Alex! I will be looking at this closer this afternoon.

You are awesome!

Sara

[alex_t_king]

Whoops - I left something in the zip file I shouldn't have...

remove the lines at the top of the page body that look something like this:

[Gadget Girl]

Thanks Alex! Awesome job!!

Sara

[alex_t_king]

Some new features included in a beta 5 zip file now available on my site - mainly links to archived posts and other assorted niceties.
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[Gadget Girl]

Thanks Alex!

I did have one question though...when they are viewing the last 10, there is that \ before an ' such as Zalary's new site. It reads Zalary\'s new site. How do I get rid of the \ ??

Sara

[alex_t_king]

That would be a bug

I forgot to put stripslashes($varname) on the post title. Thanks for catching that.

--Alex
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