Optimizing Your Website for Mobile Safari (PDF)

Optimizing Your Website for Mobile Safari (Digital Short Cut)

By August Trometer

When Apple announced the iPhone, they also ushered in yet another mobile browser for web developers to contend with: Mobile Safari. While Safari is built on the typical web standards supported by other browsers, Mobile Safari brings in an entirely new paradigm of web browsing. With its touch-screen display, users tap and "pinch" on web pages to bring the content into view. And while most web sites "should" work normally on the iPhone and iPod touch's Mobile Safari, there are some additional tweaks web designers can make to their sites to enhance the user experience.

This digital Short Cut introduces web designers and developers to the basic concepts of browsing on the iPhone and iPod touch using Mobile Safari. You'll learn about how the browser works and why it's so important to help users get the full experience from your website. You'll also learn about:

• Ways to detect Mobile Safari, using JavaScript and PHP
• How to serve up a style sheet that's Mobile Safari-specific to ensure your website is viewable on the iPhone and iPod touch
• Mobile Safari-specific CSS attributes that take advantage of Safari's WebKit
• Which MIME types are supported--and more importantly, not supported--by Mobile Safari
• How to create video content for viewing in Mobile Safari

This Short Cut pulls together all the information you need to make your website iPhone and iPod touch-compatible and condenses it down into a quick run-through of everything you need to know.

Optimizing Your Website for Mobile Safari (Digital Short Cut)

August Trometer

ISBN-10: 0-321-54401-3

ISBN-13: 978-0-321-54401-8

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: iPhone Basics

Chapter 2: Getting Standard

Chapter 3: Getting Compatible

Chapter 4: Getting Optimized

Chapter 5: Using Rich Media

Chapter 6: How-To's and Other Quick Tips

Appendix: Resources

About the Author

Written by August Trometer, an Indianapolis-based web developer, you'll learn the ins and outs of making your website work on the iPhone and iPod touch by someone who's been there himself. Web developer by day and Cocoa programmer by night, August was the founder of dotmac.info, the only "community" site for Apple's .Mac members, and the creator of iPodderX, the first third-party utility for Podcasting. You can contact him via his website, foggynoggin.com.