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I suppose you could go this route. More realistic is to produce different server side files for each client type and keep it simple. There are tons of busines

I suppose you could go this route. More realistic is to produce different server side files for each client type and keep it simple. There are tons of business reasons to make them physically separate as well, special promotions, advertising requirements, conditional scripts, etc.

ch0wn 12y ago
And there are also tons of reasons for the responsive solution. It all depends on your requirements and use cases. I don't think there's way to unconditionally say that one is better than the other at the moment.
nlh 12y ago
One reason not to use your method: Google's own guidelines. See: https://developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone-sites/details https://developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone-sites/de... "Sites that use responsive web design, i.e. sites that serve all devices on the same set of URLs, with each URL serving the same HTML to all devices and using just CSS to change how the page is rendered on the device. This is Google's recommended configuration." Generally I've found that when Google recommends something, their search algo prefers this too. I obviously don't have direct proof that it does, but if SEO matters I'd follow what they suggest.
- kinlan 12y ago
  It's an interesting one. Adaptive serving is a reasonable solution when you are a large site and you can't wholesale merge your site in one go into a fully responsive solution. We find that Adaptive (i.e, server side detection of "mobile") leads to way more problems in the long term with maintenance, keeping up with new devices and also ensuring that you have all the correct canonical links etc in place to ensure that your "SEO" is still good. Our guidance is responsive all the things...