I just started testing with a Blackberry 8700g device, and was surprised to find that when I navigate to a page that is hidden from “Mobile clients”, it still shows in the Blackberry browser, but when I hide it from “Web browsers”, it gets a 404 error. Is the Blackberry browser not considered a “mobile client”? If not, what is, and also how do I detect that I am running on such a device? Do I have to find the screen resolution or something? I thought the whole point of the “mobile client” hide flag was for this sort of scenario, but maybe it is not for things shown through the browser but some other way.
Update: I did find that @GetHTTPHeader(“User-Agent”) returns a string starting with “Blackberry”, but that hardly seems reliable, and doesn’t mean a Treo or other mobile device will work, does it?
Subject: RE: Is the Blackberry browser not considered a “mobile client”?
Thanks for the link, which is very useful. I still don’t know how, or whether, you can distinguish the mobile browser in your Notes applications so that you can provide an experience better tuned to the smaller screen. I guess that HTML over WAP would indicate to Domino that it was a “mobile client”, but is there any way to distinguish it otherwise?
Subject: RE: Is the Blackberry browser not considered a “mobile client”?
Hi Ben
Hope you get this as it’s been a day or two now.
The results of research are as follows:
The blackberry browser, when calling a formwith ?ReadForm that has been set up with some C4Disp fields shows:
for HTTP_USER_AGENT , a string containing the phrase “Blackberry” and the type of device being used. Knowing RIMM, there is no guarantee that will be consistent though!
for @clientType you get “web”
for @browserInfo(“BrowserType”) you get “unknown”
It appears that the mobile check box may only hide things when the mobile access is via Domino Everyplace Access (DEA) and that for ANY WAP/Mobile device that accesses Domin http directly, it will not work. I do not have DEA set up here to test.
The Blackberry browser (under options → general options) allows you to set the blackberry browser to emulate different types of browser. Changing this option DOES change the information passed back to my test form. For example, if I change the Blackberry browser to emulate Microsoft IE, I get:
for HTTP_USER_AGENT , a string containing the same Blackberry stuff as before, but additionally contains "Mozilla 4.0 compatible etc. as for IE)
for @clientType you get “web”
for @browserInfo(“BrowserType”) you get “Microsoft”
There doesn’t seem to be a way that I can see at the moment to configure the BB browser to send additional headers that could be used for identification.
Looks as if searching for “blackberry” in the HTTP_USER_AGENT CGI variable might be your best bet…
Subject: RE: Is the Blackberry browser not considered a “mobile client”?
Thanks, I appreciate the information. It is a real shame there is not a more reliable way, as it would be nice adjust a website to better handle mobile devices. I may use the user agent, but I notice that the Blackberry also does not support tables, and that might be a good test as well. I’ll try a couple of apporaches. I really appreciate your sharing your findings, and will post back if I get more details.
Subject: RE: Is the Blackberry browser not considered a “mobile client”?
Blackberry should support tables. There is an option in the Options → Browser configuration that says “Support HTML tables” - this appears to be off by default though , so may not help you.
Subject: Is the Blackberry browser not considered a “mobile client”?
I have done a little work with Domino feed to BlackBerry. The papers I have read says that its easy and Domino and BlackBerry work well together. I think this is written from the marketing departments. I have some actions buttons (pretty simple) that work fine in IE and Firefox but fail on BlackBerry because the Domino does not structure the _doclick with a return false. The action works fine if the the document is open for editing but fails for a document not open for editing. In my case the document will seldom be open for editing. I have been informed by IBM that it will be fixed in 7.0.3 whenever it is released, and I have not found a workaround yet. The reality is I’m not sure if the problem is with the BlackBerry Browser not being standard or Domino, but it is really a problm.
The advise that I have recieved is to look at the @GetHTTPHeader to determine if you are using BlackBerry which to my mind is a Kludge and could change at any time.