Making Drupal Mobile

Making a Drupal website mobile-ready is a big challenge for site designers/developers.  On the one hand, you are expected to develop a site that uses the latest tools (AJAX, jQuery, etc.).  Then, just when you think you've got the requirements nailed, you see the last line that says, "must accommodate mobile browsers."  This, in effect, amounts to having to create two versions of your website: one for current browers and one for browsers circa 1998 with tiny displays.

Lucky for us Drupalists, there are a number of emerging tools and techniques for providing rich functionality while still integrating seemless mobile browser support.  On the design side, themers are starting to develop mobile sub-themes to go with their rich browser counterparts.  One excellent example is AT Mobile, a mobile sub-theme for the excellent AdaptiveTheme starter theme from, you guessed it, Adaptive Themes.

There are also a number of modules for automating the handling of mobile browsers.  For example, the powerful Domain Access module can allow you to have a completely separate site for mobile viewers running off the same code base and database as your primary site.  The Mobile Tools module provides some tools for making your site mobile.  There's the BrowseCap module, for browser detection, and the Wurfl module, for device detection.

More help comes from OSMOBI and Siruna, which claim to help Drupal developers take their sites mobile with minimal cost and effort.  I have not tested both of these sites, but it seems hard to believe that there is a magic bullet for mobile browser support.

Bottom line: there's no easy way to leverage the latest desktop browser features while still providing a rich and relevant mobile experience.  It takes considerable planning to build a mobile interface in Drupal that is relevant and efficient for your visitors.  I have been to many sites where it is obvious that the mobile interface was purely an afterthought, with confusing navigation, broken functionality and obviously missing or poorly rendered content.  As with most things, it's best to take the time to do it right (which probably means building a separate mobile site) or don't do it at all.  In this mobile age, I doubt the latter is an option.