How to make website ok for an iphone etc

[think2]

If you're making a website and you want it to look ok on an iphone or other "small screen" devices, do you have to have a customised version for those devices so that it is easy to use? If so, how do you detect what the device type is and what do you have to do to make your website usable on a small screen device? (I've never used an iphone etc. so I don't know how well it works for surfing the internet.)

TIA

 

[EagleKeeper]

I would expect that the web browser on the device send some ID type that your site could detect and select the appropriate type of pages to be returned.

I see that on Yahoo on my droid. I do not know if the app on the phone is being triggered or just that Yahoo is shipping different formats to my browser

 

[Ken g6]

I would expect that the web browser on the device send some ID type that your site could detect and select the appropriate type of pages to be returned.

Correct: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_agent#User_agent_identification

 

[CuriousMike]

When developing my hobby site recently, I googled "best resolution for website."
There are definite best practices, and articles that discuss PC/Smartphone.

What I got out of the article is use the normal ~970px wide as your guideline, as most smartphones are optimized for 1024 browsing.

 

[Ichinisan]

You can have a custom favicon for iOS devices.

As a general rule, mobile pages should not have panels on the sides. Everything should scroll vertically. As a courtesy, article titles and brief summaries should not load images until the article is clicked to open/expand it (users are probably on a metered data plan).