It’s reiterative and somewhat resource intensive because it has to run the new shortcode to get the same result as one simple function call used to, but I tried this and it seems to work, and since it only happens at plugin initialization, it’s probably not too bad:
$uidx_device = do_shortcode(“[show_if device=’phone’]phone[/show_if]“);
if ( $uidx_device == ” )
$uidx_device = do_shortcode(‘[show_if device="smalltablet"]smalltablet[/show_if]‘);
else
if ( $uidx_device == ” )
$uidx_device = do_shortcode(‘[show_if device="tablet"]tablet[/show_if]‘);
Then I can use the final result to set a global variable to control the rest of my plugin’s php logic. It’s a lot more complicated in practice, because my plugins have to work with sites that are still WeaverII as well as migrating to Weaver Xtreme, so I have to have both coding techniques in place, just in case. Once the various 3rd party vendors I get content from via http APIs get their stuff to be mobile responsive, I might be able to eliminate all of that.