Which media types is it worth including stylesheets for?

Question

My website already has screen and print stylesheets, but there are several more. Are these still worth creating stylesheets for or are they no longer relevant?

Answer 1

The CSS Media Types screen and print is enough in most circumstances, unless your visitors have special needs and you have the time and resources to make them happy.

I am not familiar with developing style sheets to people with disabilities (like the aural Media Type) which I guess is nothing to be proud of, but the needed knowledge and tools for proper testing seem hard to come by. Simple googling did not turn up a browser with aural support.

The handheld Media Type is not a very good tool to ensure an enjoyable experience for mobile devices, since they come in an absurd variety. You can use it to hide portions of the page which is unimportant enough to omit on small screens, but creating a style sheet which will make your site look good on a healthy portion of mobile devices is close to impossible, unless your site is structured in a simple way.

W3C are working on http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-mediaqueries/ which is trying to address the problems of mobile devices, but it is not silver bullet and it’s getting some harsh and relevant critique on http://www.cloudfour.com/css-media-query-for-mobile-is-fools-gold/

If mobile device support is important, it’s probably more productive looking at serving them specialized html/media, either highly simplified or specialized to the individual device.

So you are probably okay with just having the CSS Media Types screen and print.

Answer 2

They're all relevant if that's what your target audience will be using. One you may want to consider is for mobile devices (media="handheld"). Mobile devices are a fast growing segment of users and a stylesheet for their smaller screens is a good idea to use.

The others are for small audiences and never were used widely. But that doesn't mean they are irrelevant. They are only irrelevant if your target audience won't be using those user-agents to view your website.