January 7, 2010 - 12pm

Before launching this site, I had plans to create two alternate optimized versions: one for iPhone, iPod touch, and devices that run Android (for simplicity, I’ll refer to this version collectively as iPhone-optimized), and one for all other mobile devices. Shortly before taking off for the holidays, I wrapped them up and they’re now live (iPhone-optimized, mobile-optimized). The iPhone-optimized site incorporates the fantastic jQTouch by David Kaneda while the mobile-optimized site is much more simple.

iPhone-Optimized Site

I’ve been keeping tabs on jQTouch for a while now and was glad to finally take it for a spin. For those in the dark, it’s a jQuery plugin that provides a powerful framework for quickly building mobile web applications. While not limited to use on iPhones and iPod touches (it’s geared to work just as well on Android-powered and other capable devices with WebKit-based browsers, though I can’t test and confirm), the interface, included themes, and experience are based heavily on that of the iPhone OS.

With the help of jQTouch, I was able to build an iPhone-optimized counterpart that retains all the same content from the full site relatively quickly and without duplication of content. The about page copy, work entries including their image sets, Tumblr posts, and contact form — it’s all there.

Integrating Into CakePHP

Since the main site is built with CakePHP, implementing an alternate iPhone layout was, well, cake. First, the layout (located in views/layouts/iphone.ctp) is triggered in the AppController’s beforeFilter method when the sub-domain, i.mightydream.com, is accessed; here I also set a globally-available variable called is_iphone to true which is helpful later in the individual controller actions:

class AppController extends Controller {
	...
	
	function beforeFilter() {
		if ($this->Session->host == 'i.mightydream.com') {
			$this->layout = 'iphone';
			$this->is_iphone = true;
		}
	}
}

Now, it’s business-as-usual in Cake with a minor addition to each controller action that also renders a view for the iPhone-optimized site. Each interior page in the iPhone interface is loaded on-the-fly via Ajax to help keep the initial payload down; these requests are made using the same URL structure as the main site (e.g. /about, /work, /work/giftag) and, thus, use the same controller actions. If the previously-set variable, is_iphone, is true, the iPhone view is rendered instead of the normal view:

class WorksController extends Controller {
	...
	
	function index() {
		$work = $this->Work->find('all');
		$this->set('work', $work);
		
		if ($this->is_iphone) $this->render('iphone/index', 'ajax');
	}
}

The addition of the ajax parameter used in the render method causes the view to be rendered by itself without a surrounding layout. And that’s it. These examples are simplified, but at the most basic level this is how I provide an alternate layout.

Styling It

I started with the “Apple” theme included with jQTouch and made various tweaks to fit my own preferences and needs. I cleaned up a few minor pieces that were slightly off, added a tilted arrow for links that open in a new window, and added style support for the spinner shown as sub-pages are loaded via Ajax (which is all of them). Now that it’s up and running, perhaps my next urge will be to bring it more in-line with the full site, design-wise.

I also took advantage of jQTouch’s simple support for bookmarking sites on the home screen. When bookmarked, you’ll see a custom icon, a loading screen, and true full-screen support which ditches the Mobile Safari address and tool bars.

Image Galleries

For the image gallery in each work entry, I used a modified version of the jQTouch extention, jQTouch-Gallery, by Ryan McKillen. It provides a nice interface similar to the native iPhone photo gallery including tapping once to toggle the title and navigation bars for a full-screen view.

It was also a breeze to implement and I had to make only a few minor modifications: (1) I rearranged the contents of the title bar, and (2) I changed the look of the navigation bar. The transitions I’d like to bring more in-line with the native UI (sliding only the image instead of flipping the image including the title/navigation bars), but that’s all for another day.

Handling Auto-Redirects

There’s much discussion surrounding how to handle directing visitors to companion mobile site(s). I settled on the approach of automatically redirecting mobile users to the appropriate site, then providing a way to view the full site. On the iPhone-optimized site, tapping the View Full Site button on the home page will take the user to the full site and remember this preference for 30 days by setting a cookie. Revisiting the iPhone-optimized site directly will reset this preference and return the auto-redirect behavior to normal. The code in question also sits in the AppController’s beforeFilter:

class AppController extends Controller {
	...
	
	function beforeFilter() {
		if ($this->Session->host == 'i.mightydream.com') {
			...
		}
		else if ($this->Session->host == 'm.mightydream.com') {
			...
		}
		// or force layout for mobile agents
		else if ($this->RequestHandler->isMobile()) {
			// iPhone & Android
			if ((stripos($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'], 'iPhone') || stripos($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'], 'Android'))) {
				// if the iPhone cookie is simply not set or the user has not tapped "View Full Site", redirect to iPhone site
				if (!isset($_COOKIE['MDRM_iPHONE']) || (isset($_COOKIE['MDRM_iPHONE']) && (bool)$_COOKIE['MDRM_iPHONE'] != false)) {
					header('Location: i.mightydream.com');
				}
			}
			// mobile
			else {
				header('Location: m.mightydream.com');
			}
		}
	}
}

Mobile-Optimized Site