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How does a website detect whether http requests are comming from a mobile device or not? In my mind, it's all just TCP/IP packets with a standard address/port header right? Is this a hardware/routing thing? Is it the hosting service like Apache? What does one need to know to prepare a website for mobile redirection?

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  • For the future this would be a better question for Webmasters.SE than us :)
    – voretaq7
    Jan 14, 2012 at 5:41

2 Answers 2

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Generally speaking, this is most likely done by inspecting the HTTP-User-Agent that is sent in the HTTP request. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_agent has more information. Mobile safari sends a different string that the web page can investigate (via js/php/etc), and then serve different content, or change the stylesheet, or send them to a different page. Also, server data compression can be quite useful in general, but especially for mobile devices, especially because many mobile broadband connections are quite slow. So the server will also use optimization techniques for data, again especially helpful for mobile clients.

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To expand on the other answer, You can utilize a database such as WURFL that contains browser agent strings (As well as device capabilities)

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  • +1 for WURFL - very comprehensive for those looking for dynamic mobile experiences.
    – thinice
    Dec 15, 2011 at 23:59

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