Detect-and-route with JavaScript
By Molly E. Holzschlag2005-03-31
Planning ahead
|
|
Before you do any scripting, it's important to understand both the intended audience for your site and the proposed content. You and your development team must carefully study any available demographic information and server statistics that will help you know what to expect of the target audience -- the browsers, operating systems, monitor resolution, plug-in technologies they are likely to have, for instance. (See "The rock bottom lowest-common-denominator".) Then you can determine how to meet the needs of that audience by providing the best possible visual and technical experience. (See "Route for technology, not content".) Delivering the design and technology with consistency and clarity follows from there.
Understanding site content demands that you sit down with the client, organization, or colleagues involved and study the mission of the site. Having specific goals helps you to define what kind of options you will need to script. For example, if you anticipate a lot of Internet Explorer-centric DHTML on the site, but you need to support users without IE, you can plan for a script that routes non-IE users to a more accommodating page.
Tutorial Pages:
» Keep users happy by using savvy scripts
» Serving user needs
» Planning ahead
» The rock-bottom lowest-common-denominator
» Route for technology, not content
» Finding scripts or rolling your own
» Detecting the details
» Routing by browser type
» Matching pages to display resolution
» Testing your scripts
» Summing up
» Resources
First published by IBM DeveloperWorks
|
