Device Detection

51Degrees.mobi device detection solution, available in C, PHP, .NET and Java platforms, has been recently ported to Python.

This article presents the solution, introduces the different Python packages composing the product and shows the implementation of a couple of simple use cases.

The ability to detect mobile devices is an important part of website and web application design. Over the last year, requests to sites from mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones have risen to almost 20% of total web traffic. As well as this, dozens of new devices with varying screen sizes, input methods and capabilities are released onto the market all the time. Keeping up with this diversity is a nessecery but difficult task for any organisation maintaining a presence on the web. A good solution is to use a Device Description Repository to detect mobile devices through the browser header and its User Agent. 51Degrees.mobi's professionally maintained device data makes this process easy to implement and stays current through automatic updates.

51Degrees.mobi has been selected as a finalist in the Mobile Entertainment Awards. Here is why we think we should win!

Understanding what devices are browsing your website and their capabilities is key to optimising your website for mobile. I have put together some small code examples showing how you can gain this sort of knowledge using 51Degrees Device Detection, allowing you to fully optimise your mobile users web experience.

51Degrees Mobile Theme Switcher for Drupal allows you to take existing content and offer it to mobile users with an optimised theme. You can quickly, easily and cost-effectively optimise your Drupal website for mobile performance by following this blog.

Developing websites to accommodate for mobile devices has now become standard practice. However, what happens when developers need to determine between different mobile devices (tablets, smartphones, e-readers, games consoles etc)?

To celebrate our new office move, the 51Degrees team took to the streets of Reading for an evening filled with tasty food and beverages. We stopped off at the handmade burger Co restaurant that was recently opened in Reading at the start of the year. We all had a great experience, with fantastic food and a great environment; however, there was something that left a sour taste in our mouth.

There are two technical approaches that can be used to detect mobile devices: On-Premise and Cloud based. This blog explains the advantages and disadvantages of each and provides free source code to enable you to evaluate which solution is right for your organisation.

This blog will describe how to implement 51Degrees.mobi properties client side by generating dynamic JavaScript from the server using 51Degrees.mobi device detection capability. For example; The follow code could be used to perform an action if the screen diagonal dimension is more than 5 inches.

if (feature.ScreenInchesDiagonal > 5) {....}

51Degrees.mobi is compatible with the Zend developer cloud, "PHPCloud", without the need for php extensions. This short guide will show you how to implement the 51Degrees.mobi PHP device detection API using the developer cloud.