Creating a PDA / Pocket PC Optimized Web Site

After recently acquiring a GPS/PDA system and a WiFi SDIO card, I started hunting around online and was appalled to find that there is a lack of PDA optimized web sites out there. I decided to build my own PDA version of this very resource center, and took it up on myself to learn as I went along.

This tutorial summarizes a number of tips I have to offer on developing PDA Optimized Web Sites.

Limit Your Dimensions

PDA screens are a lot smaller than PC screens, and a majority run on a resolution of 240x320. This means you have very little space to work with when designing a PDA optimized version of your site. To avoid horizontal scrollbars on your PDA version, restrict your web pages width to about 220px.

Images? What Images?

It is strongly advised that you limit the number of images on your PDA web site. They take up valuable resources on the viewers PDA and that's something you really do not want to do. Use images sparingly or not at all.

Avoid Frames

This should be pretty much a standard web practice now anyway due to the impact they make on search engines, but when it comes to PDA sites they are an even bigger no go area. One of the reasons apart from the obvious lack of space is that Pocket IE allows for frames to be resized so they can really make your sites look bad.

Browser Scripting? What's That?

As you guessed, Javascript and any other browser scripting languages should not be used. Pocket PC does support a stripped down version of the Javascript DOM (Document Object Model) but chances are your scripts will not run anyway and they will only hinder loading times.

Return to Top

This is quite an important feature than many people seem to over look. Viewers of your PDA web site will likely be doing a lot of scrolling, so you should provide them with a return to top link that will jump them back up to the menu of your site in a second.

Use Text Links

Joining up with the no images note above, your hyperlinks should really all be text based, as much of a pain as it is.

Submit your Site to the PDA Directory!

This is probably the most important point of them all. Submit your site to my PDA Web Directory at http://pda-web.neutron2k.co.uk. This is a PDA optimized web site directory for PDA optimized web sites. It is human controlled so all submissions require review by a moderator before they make the index.

The PDA Web Directory is a new, on going project.