Convert existing site to mobile friendly site

[Grafiti4u]

I have 2 clients who want to have their sites optimized to view nicely on mobile devices. I am not sure where to begin, any tips?

I have created their sites using templates, Project Seven applications, and CSS. Do I have to pretty much start clean,designing a new site to view on devices? Or can I somehow convert a good portion of these sites in Dreamweaver, and then tweek after that?

I have DW CS3 and CS5. Thanks for any insight or direction!

thanks,
Kristi

 

[DHDdirect]

I would look into using Tera-WURFL. Easy to implement and it's accurate.

You can decide how you want your website to react to the information, whether it be forward to a mobile friendly site, or point to a different mobile friendly css.

 

[Grafiti4u]

Thanks Jason! Does this mean I don't have to do any additional design tweaks to my page? That would be awesome!!

I pulled up the site on an IPod yesterday and it looks perfect. Rollover worked fine and the page wasn't broken. I was excited to think I may not have to do a ton of additional work to make my current sites work on mobile devices. Hopefully the use of Tera-WURFL will be the perfect solution!

Thanks!
Kristi

 

[DHDdirect]

You more than likely will have to make tweaks, if you didn't well then you wouldn't need to detect the mobile device in the first place.

Certain mobile devices can render ordinary websites fine but the issue generally comes in with loading times. It's all about convenience for the user. You want a mobile version to be fast, easy to read, and to function properly. Your best bet is to stripe most images, and the ones you do leave for mobile optimize for fast download, get rid of any flash (because certain mobile devices wont support it such as apple), and make it easy to read straight from loading ( I hate having to zoom, although it's getting easier with these touch devices).

Now if you really want to get crazy, you can setup two separate mobile sites, one for small screens and one for larger screens such as tablets. Tablets obviously can handle a bit more proper design but again, I'd still have all images optimized for quick loading. It sucks to wait, and users generally have limited data transfer.