[whatwg] RWD Heaven: if browsers reported device capabilities in a request header

[Charles McCathieNevile]

On Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:33:56 +0100, Ryosuke Niwa <rniwa at webkit.org> wrote:

> On Feb 6, 2012 9:04 AM, "Boris Zbarsky" <bzbarsky at mit.edu> wrote:
...
>> This assumes that the entire page is onscreen at once, which is a pretty
> bad assumption for said scenarios.
...
> I agree with Boris' points. Some high-end smart phones already have HDMI
> outputs. Maybe people would start "docking" those devices to replace  
> laptop computers in near future.

Actually I do this already with my tablet - the idea is so my elderly  
family
can see it on the TV and we can use it together, and so they can learn to
use it on their own.

>> Sure.  I'm not entirely sure how sympathetic I am to the need to produce
>> "reduced-functionality" pages...  The examples I've encountered have  
>> mostly been in one of three buckets:
>>
>> 1) "Why isn't the desktop version just like this vastly better mobile
>> one?"
>> 2) "The mobile version has a completely different workflow necessitating
>> a different url structure, not just different images and CSS"
>
> This might be a valid use case for a device capability API since  
> different devices may have completely different platform conventions for
> UI and workflow such that using the same UI as the one served for desktop
> computers isn't desirable.

Yep. TV for example. (I'm still sympathetic to Boris' point that most often
the developer does a terrible job of this, but that's why I can choose to
use someone else's services instead of trying to tell all developers they
can only make things the way I like them).

cheers

Chaals

-- 
Charles 'chaals' McCathieNevile  Opera Software, Standards Group
     je parle français -- hablo español -- jeg kan litt norsk
http://my.opera.com/chaals       Try Opera: http://www.opera.com