Mobile Theme - new branch, new development

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laura s's picture
Posted by laura s on March 28, 2011 at 11:08pm

Last week I became co-maintainer of the Mobile Theme. http://drupal.org/project/mobile

Since the theme first was launched years ago, much has happened in the mobile space -- to the point where mobile first is becoming the smart way to go.

I've started a new 7.x-2.x branch of the module to focus on new styles for clean, readable presentation of content on various mobile platforms. First up is developing clean type presentation, with responsive design adjusting for screen sizes. Other plans are largely TBD, but do include HTML5 support down the line and perhaps some color.module support (so people can customize the basic look without having to create a subtheme).

What would you like to see in the Mobile theme? What are the musts and wants as you see it?

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Comments

Excellent news, I look

Posted by lukas.white on March 29, 2011 at 8:24am
lukas.white's picture

Excellent news, I look forward to seeing what you come up with.

I'd consider looking at HTML5 from the off, particularly with the HTML5 Mobile Boilerplate coming out yesterday - although this might only be appropriate for high-end smartphones.

Personally, I wouldn't bother with the color module, but then I like getting my hands dirty and sub-theming.

Optional integration with Mobile Tools would be good, likewise Mobile Plugin. Certainly an extensible set of device groups - tying into WURFL or Browscap if required - would be useful.

A nice, clean way of using conditional stylesheets would be good, though I guess you can simply use media queries within the stylesheets themselves.

Thanks

Posted by laura s on March 29, 2011 at 2:33pm
laura s's picture
  • HTML5 — What I am going to do is check on the state of HTML5 tools. With so much xhtml hard-coded in core and contrib, HTML5 is not an easy accomplishment atm.
  • Color.module — This one is a toss-up for me, and maybe such integration is for a sister project instead, so as to keep the theme as lightweight as possible.
  • Mobile Tools — What integration need do you see? I confess I've not tried Mobile Tools. One challenge with device detection, WURFL & Browscap is that they are server-side, and afaik that requires either skipping high-performance site caching to create sessions for users for select redirection. The alternative of using JavaScript for detection is potentially viable, but I don't know of any supported approaches for that and requires piecemeal assembly of scripts, which can be a challenge to maintain for a one-off project. If someone knows of exceptions or reasons why these assumptions are wrong, please do reply, because this limitation is a pita when it comes to enterprise sites needing full-on mobile versions.
  • @media queries — This responsive design approach is my favorite currently. Because of the limitations of named stylesheets (different devices read different filenames, and some ignore them all), this has been the method with the most cross-browser support, in my experience. @media queries are already in the 7.x-2.x-dev release, but I'm still fleshing out the minimal basic styles, designing in each window, with the goal of limiting overrides to ids and classes upstream.
  • Conditional stylesheets — Maybe as browser-specific issues come to light, there may be indication for this, but as it requires either preprocess functions or using Conditional Styles module, I prefer to hold off for now.

I welcome comments/rebuttals/(cheers?) for any or all of these thoughts.

Laura Scott
PINGV | Strategy • Design • Drupal Development

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