By understanding a website author's intention through an analysis of the function of a website, website content can be adapted for presentation or rendering in a manner that more closely appreciates and respects the function behind the website. A website's function is analyzed so that its content can be adapted to different client environments. A function-based object model (FOM) identifies objects associated with a website, and analyzes those objects in terms of their functions. Desktop oriented websites are adapted for mobile devices based on the FOM and on a mobile control intermediary language. While the FOM attempts to understand a website author's intention based on functional analysis of web content, the mobile control intermediary language enables the author to create web content that can be presented in various mobile devices by processing the objects, by extracting forms from the objects, and by generating a file in the mobile control intermediary language for each form.