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Standard way to detect mobile mail client?

Asked 2011-03-15T18:37:33.767
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This question is similar to "Standard way to detect mobile browsers in a web application based on the http request" except for mail clients. For instance, if an email message is opened on the built-in iPhone mail client it will display a version of the message specially formatted for the iPhone. If opened on an tablet or desktop it will display as the complete, full-size version of the email. This is similar in principle to web sites that have mobile-friendly versions of the site that load automatically by detecting the user-agent - but for email clients.

So - is it possible to detect the mail client being used to open an email and format the message accordingly? Perhaps a way to detect the screen resolution?

iphone html css email mobile
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When you say "mail client", do you mean the real email client that uses ActiveSync, IMAP or POP access? Then you'd need to know if there is any information on each protocol that could simulate the User-Agent from HTTP, which unfortunately there is none on IMAP or POP3 AFAIK. Over Active-Sync, being HTTP, you have the User-Agent and can tweak the responses as you which - for example, first the device asks for a text version (e.g. the preview lines on the list view), and then asks for the whole mime version (possibly html). At this point the server can tweak the email mime and return an optimized version (e.g. tweak the markup, convert or resize attachments, etc.)

answered 2011-03-24T20:16:07.643

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