Do you design for handhelds?

I look forward to this discussion. The most I do is check that my content is accessible text-only, I have no idea what these handhelds do visually. Do they interpret my style-sheets in such a way that my content is mangle? I don't know.

So I've answered "always", I wanted "mostly" because sometimes customers make me do evil, but generally I have good intentions. :-)

I know that I should be doing this but frankly, I haven't had a client who asked or required any sort of testing on mobile devices. This obviously has to do with the kind of sites that I produce: they are for small business and focus on the design first and foremost. This functionality just isn't warranted or budget. However, if you are making a site that is focused on continually updated content (say a newspaper) I think that developing for mobile devices is essential. All sites that I build use CSS for all layout, so I might only need a few tweaks to get things in tip-top shape for most mobiles. Laura, in your article you mention a number of helpful tips but don't mention skiplinks. Skip links ("skip to content") are perfect for mobile devices and general accessibility.

On a related note, I have in the past added print stylesheets to ensure that articles print clearly despite the intricate design. For a great example of print stylesheets go and print off something from alistapart.com ... notice the unique look.

Simply making a site I inherited compliant with XHTML 1.0 also made it work on the small screen.

Writing compliant code and following accessibility guidelines goes a long way towards making things work on handhelds. (You might say they go hand in hand.)