Mobile Web on Drupal!

The Mobile Web on Drupal! Thursday, January 13, 2011

Where are we going today? Mobile Web development theories and philosophies Reality check! Core tenets I like to stick to So, about Drupal...the good and the bad Digging in and putting some pieces together (CODE!) Stuff to read so you can learn more Thursday, January 13, 2011

How technical is this going to be? We’ll start high level (everyone) We’ll talk about strategy and device grouping (everyone/solution architects) We’ll talk about Drupal’s strengths and weaknesses and 3rd-party stuff. (everyone/somewhat technical) We’ll look at code for a hypothetical module and work with Drupal hooks and whatnot. (devs/code) We’ll talk about mobile theming strategy. (designers) I’ll recommend some books, blogs and mailing lists. (everyone) Thursday, January 13, 2011

Nope. This topic is huge. We won’t have time to talk about: Detailed (HTML/CSS) markup for mobile devices. The ﬁner points of device-speciﬁc support for technologies (CSS/JS/HTML5/whatever). Design and UX best practices. Testing. All of these areas are incredibly important, though! Thursday, January 13, 2011

By The Way This presentation is based on Drupal 6 My current feeling about D7* * Sorry Thursday, January 13, 2011

Leading Philosophies of Mobile Web Development Thursday, January 13, 2011

The “One Web” Thursday, January 13, 2011

One Web means making, as far as is reasonable, the same information and services available to users irrespective of the device they are using. However, it does not mean that exactly the same information is available in exactly the same representation across all devices. The context of mobile use, device capability variations, bandwidth issues and mobile network capabilities all affect the representation... ...it is considered best practice to provide as reasonable experience as is possible given device limitations and not to exclude access from any particular class of device, except where this is necessary because of device limitations.... Errr... Thursday, January 13, 2011

That means... Separate mobile site or domain (e.g. m.mysite.com) is discouraged. All users should get, for the most part, the same text, features, markup, images, functionality, etc. (within reason, which you get to determine). Develop once (I do like this part). Thursday, January 13, 2011

Responsive Web Design (RWD) Thursday, January 13, 2011

RWD Using sophisticated markup and CSS techniques to make the “One Web” ideal more attainable. Using CSS Media Queries to adapt content, allowing for “One Web” success Fluid grid designs For the most part, send the same HTML markup and media (e.g. images) to everyone http://www.alistapart.com/articles/responsive-web- design/ Thursday, January 13, 2011

I am a CSS Media Query: <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen and (max-device-width: 480px)" href="shetland.css" /> Thursday, January 13, 2011

Progressive Enhancement Thursday, January 13, 2011

Progressive Enhancement Not just a mobile concern Luke W’s “Mobile First” credo is in the same family Design your baseline site for mobile, then go from there http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?933 Thursday, January 13, 2011

Server-Side Device Detection and Adaptation Thursday, January 13, 2011

Who goes there? Thursday, January 13, 2011

Server-Side Device Detection Based on using User Agent strings to make an educated guess at what a device is and what capabilities it has Several device libraries support this. Two of the best known are: WURFL DeviceAtlas Thursday, January 13, 2011

WURFL http://wurﬂ.sourceforge.net/ Maintained/moderated by Luca Passani. Exhaustive details about mobile device and client capabilities based on User Agent. Contributors have created APIs in several languages. Free and open source. Thursday, January 13, 2011

Let’s Look at some WURFL Capabilities Tera-WURFL Explorer http://www.tera-wurﬂ.com/explore/ Thursday, January 13, 2011

DeviceAtlas Licenses run from $99/yr (per server) to ... well, more. You get guaranteed updates. API is PHP, Java, .Net Analytics as well. Web site is free and a useful reference for looking up devices right quick. http://deviceatlas.com Thursday, January 13, 2011

Client-Side Adaptation Thursday, January 13, 2011

Whereas server-side detection asks “Who goes there?,” client-side adaptation allows you to say things like: Thursday, January 13, 2011

Oh, yeah? prove it. Thursday, January 13, 2011

Client-Side Adaptation Determining real client capabilities a la Modernizr Using CSS Media queries Taking delivered markup the ﬁnal mile Ensures that the client can walk the walk Thursday, January 13, 2011

Modernizr (A Quick Aside) Runs tests on the client Adds CSS classes to the <html> element based on what it discovers You, noble developer/themer, can: Write your CSS accordingly Use JavaScript to extend your stuff Based on what the browser can actually do http://www.modernizr.com Thursday, January 13, 2011

So, that all sounds lovely and clean and unicorn-shaped. Thursday, January 13, 2011

The Reality Thursday, January 13, 2011

Thursday, January 13, 2011

“One Web” is vague Dear Puny Human, Make one Web site such that it’s, like, the same on all devices, except, well, make sure that it is appropriately different on some devices. Don’t exclude anyone, except when “device limitations” force you to. I’ll leave deciding what a device limitation is as an exercise for the reader. Love, The W3C http://www.w3.org/TR/mobile-bp/#OneWeb Thursday, January 13, 2011

RWD has performance and bandwidth implications Image resizing on devices can be inefﬁcient and uses bandwidth you might not need to use. CSS media query support is fragmented and only on modern devices. For the most part, images hidden in CSS still get downloaded. We’re sending the device bytes that it is not going to use. http://www.cloudfour.com/css-media-query-for-mobile- is-fools-gold/ Thursday, January 13, 2011

Shoving a 153,600-pixel image at a phone that only has about 16,000 pixels of real estate to work with is like giving 4-by-8- foot sheets of plywood to a kid who wants to build a miniature birdhouse. Even if wood is cheap, it tastelessly wastes a lot of trees... —Lyza Gardner (Me) Adventures on the Mobile Web Frontier, Nov. 4, 2010 * http://www.cloudfour.com/adventures-on-the-mobile-web-frontier-wrangling- drupal-third-party-apis-and-server-oomph-into-an-enterprise-class- experience/ * Sorry about that URL; my bad Thursday, January 13, 2011

Server-side device detection via UA is not infallible... Who goes there? Hello, Web Server, I am a sheep! Thursday, January 13, 2011

Who goes there? Web Server! I am also a sheep!* *Not really a sheep. Thursday, January 13, 2011

Client-side enhancement can be pretty tricky if your user’s device isn’t up to it “Hi, I’m BlackBerry version 4.5. You’d be surprised at how many people at big companies still use me and love me. You cannot manipulate my DOM and my JavaScript performance is very sad. Sorry.” Thursday, January 13, 2011

Duct Tape Programming “Duct tape programmers are pragmatic... “A 50%-good solution that people actually have solves more problems and survives longer than a 99% solution that nobody has because it’s in your lab where you’re endlessly polishing the damn thing. “Shipping is a feature. A really important feature. Your product must have it.” —Joel Spolsky The Duct Tape Programmer, Sept. 23, 2009 Joel on Software http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/09/23.html Thursday, January 13, 2011

So, how do we keep our nose clean in this tragicomical environment? Staying True to a Couple of Tenets... Thursday, January 13, 2011

1. Don’t send bits to a device that it won’t use Thursday, January 13, 2011

bits == dollars bits == waiting bits ~= processing Thursday, January 13, 2011

2. The client is always right* * This one gets me in a bit of trouble Thursday, January 13, 2011

Remember how I said that User Agents aren’t always 100% honest and forthcoming? Or, at least, sane? Thursday, January 13, 2011

Whose User Agent is this? Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_5_7; en-us) AppleWebKit/530.17 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Safari/530.17 Thursday, January 13, 2011

A Sane Person would guess... Desktop Safari And that’s what WURFL will tell you, too Thursday, January 13, 2011

But It’s Skyﬁre for Android. Thursday, January 13, 2011

“Load web pages as either traditional Android user agent or as a desktop browser. The desktop option gives you more ﬂexibility in accessing web sites and allows discovery of video content that might not be visible on the mobile site.”

http://www.cloudfour.com	387
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http://blog.cloudfour.com	279
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http://cloudfour.com	13
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Mobile Web on Drupal!

by Lyza Gardner

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