Designing for Handhelds
There is a lot of buzz on the design sites about designing for handheld devices. With virtually all of the new handheld devices (cell phones & PDAS) offering some kind of web access and usability improving more and more people are turning to their handheld devices to access the Internet when they’re away from their desktop computers.
We’re currently researching several PDA options for Rob to use on his job. He’s a salesman for an equipment rental company and spends 90% of his time on the road. He needs to be able to access his email and corporate web site so he can prepare quotes for clients when he’s on the road. I want a new Palm with wireless access because I have to have all the latest gadgets and my cell phone is just too tiny to surf with. 
Handheld devices are yet another reason to write standards compliant XHTML and CSS code. Stylesheets can be written specifically for handheld devices and while this is covered in tutorial 7 of your XHTML books there is a great article at CSS-Discuss by Jim Wilkinson on Stylesheets for handheld devices. Jim’s article has a lot of great tips and resources to other sites. I learned that you can test your handheld CSS sites in Opera by clicking View > Small Screen.
If you’re looking for more info on coding for handhelds, read WebMonkey’s The End-All Guide to Small-Screen Web-Dev article or check the links at the bottom of Jim’s article.
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