Patent ID: 8086253

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for providing electronic messages to a mobile device, the method comprising: receiving from the mobile device a request for at least a portion of one or more electronic messages, wherein the request for electronic messages includes a user agent string; using the user agent string included in the request to identify with a computer system an indication of a type of the mobile device by performing a look-up on a user agent string, identifying a partial match, and applying heuristic selection rules to identify the indication; identifying, using the computer system, one or more presentation parameters for presenting the electronic messages properly on the mobile device, wherein identifying the one or more presentation parameters comprises mapping the indication to a device node in a multi-level hierarchical organization of device types and presentation parameters, and traversing between levels in the hierarchical organization to move from the device node to a presentation node that includes one or more presentation parameters that correspond to presentation capabilities of mobile devices that are descendants of the presentation node; and transmitting at least a portion of the electronic messages to the mobile device in a format that corresponds to the one or more identified presentation parameters, wherein the format implements restrictions on character lengths of portions of text from the electronic messages to be displayed on the device.