Working together for standards The Web Standards Project

Reports are trickling in from the field that the long-awaited Danger T-Mobile Sidekick handheld Internet device happily mangles many web pages, including many built with valid XHTML and CSS to specifically cater to such devices. Sidekick owner Leonard Lin discovered that many sites are unreadable in the device. His workaround? Sniff for the Sidekick user-agent string and present an alternate unstyled version of the site.

There should be no need for such a workaround. The CSS specification provides a “handheld” media type so that web developers can provide a style for such devices. The Sidekick, however, is happy with the “screen” media type (even though it apparently doesn’t support the bulk of CSS) and results in some, er, interesting interpretations. Here’s hoping that the engineers in charge of the Sidekick’s browser component take notice.

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