Handheld device browser detection

This blog might seem as a media for product promotion at times, but I can’t help praising one interesting life helper. So far, I’ve used only Wurfl for website handheld / mobile browser detection, and it is doing ok. ATT is running a poll for user software preferences, and it seems there are few alternatives to this wonderful database, basically it’s do the detection yourself, or use Wurlf.

Rant of the day follows. I’ve learned that some mobile browsers have a nasty habit of ignoring the CSS media declaration for handhelds, and use media type for “screen” (basically desktop/laptop computers) instead. This is just stupid. If the developer has chosen that the site he is developing is not suited to be presented in handhelds (with often have small screens) in same way as in desktop browsers, and chooses to include a separate stylesheet for smaller screens, still some browsers think they know better. This is the case at least on my Series60 3rd Edition Web Browser. Btw, S60 folks have cool website.