āhandheldā Media Type, RIP?
Published on JunĀ 30, 2009 (updated JanĀ 31, 2025), filed under development, css (feed). (Share this on Mastodon orĀ Bluesky?)
This and many other posts are also available as a pretty, well-behaved ebook: On Web Development.
Website authors donāt use handheld as itās barely supported; mobile browser vendors donāt support handheld because itās barely used.
This is kind of the situation I think weāre facingāplease prove me otherwiseā, and itās a problem. CSSās handheld media type would be valuable to tailor content and services to mobile devices. The catch-22 weāre dealing with instead means two things:
Media types, with the exception of
print, could become useless. (Thatās not including media features, however.)We may come to depend on user agents so smart (think content scaling) and connections so fast and affordable that site owners donāt have to offer alternative, mobile-optimized access to their services.
The CSS Working Group may disagree with my thinking but I like the idea that vendors meet consumer needs to make the second point a reality: providing us with smart software and reasonable prices to avoid a mess caused byā¦ yes, who.
About Me
Iām Jens (long: Jens Oliver Meiert), and Iām a web developer, manager, and author. Iāve been working as a technical lead and engineering manager for companies youāve never heard of and companies you use every day, Iām an occasional contributor to web standards (like HTML, CSS, WCAG), and I write and review books for OāReilly and Frontend Dogma.
I love trying things, not only in web development and engineering management, but also in other areas like philosophy. Here on meiert.com I share some of my experiences and views. (I value you being critical, interpreting charitably, and giving feedback.)