Blog: Device Detection

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I spent a large CHUNK of this weekend writing a song about DEVICE DETECTION! This is the thing where a web server DETECTS what kind of DEVICE someone is using to interact with it, and then chucks back the CORRECT webpage design.

Before we go any further I should perhaps point out that someone ASKED me to do this, it's not something I had considered writing a song about before... and actually, that's one of the DELIGHTFUL aspects OF this sort of thing. I didn't really know what Device Detection WAS before this, and now i a) REALLY REALLY DO b) think it IS quite important. I mean, I come from a distant land (THE PAST) where one would look askance at such ideas. "You should design yr website properly," we might say, "so it doesn't matter WHICH of the two available main browsers your user is using!" Nowadays of course you can get the internet on laptops, tablets, televisions, telephones, your fridge, and probably soon CRISP PACKETS, all with different sizes, resolutions, shapes, control mechanisms and ALL sorts. This means that you DO need to have some idea of what the person is using, so that your website WORKS!

The song was requested to go with a KICKSTARTER campaign to raise money to make a cloud-based device detection thingy, launching in April I think. I WROTE it, EMAILED it to the chap concerned (and again, how amazing is it that you can write a song and then, TEN MINUTES LATER, have a version of it in the EARS of someone hundreds of miles away? THE FUTURE!) who came back with a couple of TWEAKS and that was it, DONE. I'm recording it on Wednesday and it's sorted!

I LOVE doing stuff like this - it's lovely having to FLEX yr BRANE to fit a BRIEF, and make it a Good Song at the same time. It's similar to the song I wrote the other week for A Brief History Of Time Travel, although RESEARCH for that one involved a lot more GAWPING out of windows IMAGINING things, and a lot less STRUGGLING through technical documents!

Talking of the A Brief History Of Time Travel theme tune news reaches me that we have FINALLY got a recording date booked in for it. The Vlads are REHEARSING later this week and then are BOOKED into Snug once more on the 11th to get the basic tracks done. They are such a bunch of International Jet Setters these days that it's taken us WEEKS to nail everyone down to a date, but a date we now HAVE, so they can get it started and then I can GILD their efforts with my Angelic Vocals at a later time. Hoorah!
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posted 18/2/2013 by MJ Hibbett

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