A way to determine browser width in PHP without javascript?

Question

First off is there one? Or would I have to use javascript? I'd like to be able to make changes to which CSS is used, so frex I could load smaller fonts for a mobile device, or whatever.

Answer 1

There is no way to do this. If you want to detect what device is being used then you should examine $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] for clues.

Answer 2

Unfortunately there is no way to detect the users resolution with PHP only. If you use Javascript, you could set this value in a cookie, and all subsequent requests could check the value of that cookie. This seems to be a pretty popular method for those working with this issue.

You could also run a small javascript from the page that checks to see if a resolution-cookie is set. If it's not, it sends an asynchronous request to the server containing the screen resolution. The server determines which CSS file to use by this value, and sends its path back to the javascript. A cookie is then set to indicate resolution has been determined, and the css file is subsequently loaded (via javascript) into the page. All future requests would cease assuming they're contingent upon the resolution cookie.

Answer 3

About all you can do is detect the browser model. From there you could match for common mobile browsers (iPhones all stick iPhone into the useragent string) and load smaller fonts by default and adjust from there.

Answer 4

This may be of some use if you don't want to use any JavaScript:

http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/media.html#media-types

Answer 5

Take a look at WURFL.
As Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams suggested in his answer, it uses the user agent string to "guess" the resolution for known devices. If you're concerned about mobile devices that's probably as accurate as you can get without the help of a client-side script/app.

Answer 6

You will have to use JavaScript. The server knows nothing about highly client-side data like that. Fortunately, JavaScript can manipulate styles and style sheets quite easily, so it should be able to tackle your problem without even involving anything server-side.

In the case of mobile devices, another easy tool is setting the media type on a style sheet to handheld.

Answer 7

You should look at Tera-WURFL, it is a PHP & MySQL-based software package that detects mobile devices and their capabilities. Here is the Tera-WURFL code that you would use to detect the browser width in PHP:

<?php
require_once("TeraWurfl.php");
$wurflObj = new TeraWurfl();
$wurflObj->GetDeviceCapabilitiesFromAgent();
$browser_width = $wurflObj->capabilities['display']['max_image_width'];
// You can also get the actual display resolution
$display_width = $wurflObj->capabilities['display']['resolution_width'];
?>