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We are creating HTML5 web app for tablets ("tablet optimized" version of the web site).

Mobile domain names have already standardized itself to m.yourdomain.com or yourdomain.mobi. But how about tablet devices?

Tablet device in this context would be a touch screen device with min. 7" physical display, supporting features like HTML5 application cache and geolocation. The main thing is that the user can save the web app to the device main screen menu and have offline functionality.

(Naturally there will be automatic browser redirect per device class, but this does not remove the need of tablet specific domains which makes things easier).

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2 Answers 2

up vote 2 down vote accepted

Yahoo has a tablet specific version of their website at www.yahoo.com/tablet while their mobile site is at m.yahoo.com

Gmail has a tablet version of the app, but it has the exact same URL as the iPhone version of the site and it's auto-detected in the first place. On both the iPhone and iPad going to www.gmail.com or mail.google.com forwards to https://mail.google.com/mail/mu/#tl/Inbox

YouTube also has a tablet version of the site and it's still at m.YouTube.com

BBC has a tablet version of their site as well, but it's auto-detected and still displays www.bbc.co.uk as the URL and has the text "Mobile" next to their logo.

I think it's pretty open. You can not use a subdomain at all and just have it all auto-detected, use the same subdomain as mobile or use tablet.[domain].com and then in the future if t, tab or something else became standard, you could forward the tablet subdomain to the t, tab, etc.

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I thought that there were SEO implications to running duplicate content sites, or didn't I get the memo?

You should autodetect because you don't want people loading the wrong 'look' of your site from their device. An example of this is when someone sends you a link to an ebay item from their mobile, you open it up on your PC/Mapple and you then have to figure out how to see it properly on the main site.

A separate URL is not going to help.

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This is no issue if the content is behind paywall and private in any case. –  Mikko Ohtamaa Jun 1 '11 at 10:38
Didn't realise you were going private/paywall. Just out of interest, how are you going to get it working in offline mode? –  ʍǝɥʇɐɯ Jun 1 '11 at 10:43
HTML5 application cache. The application in the question would be more like "email reader" than a web site. –  Mikko Ohtamaa Jun 1 '11 at 14:42
Thanks for the tip! –  ʍǝɥʇɐɯ Jun 1 '11 at 14:48

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