I am evaluating open-source CMS systems to see which one(s) would be the best option to deliver rich mobile web based applications for mobile handhelds.
So far I am leaning towards Drupal because it seems to be the most extensible, flexible, best performance (cache & compression, etc) and has a good user management system.
The CMS must be able to deliver HTML content that is ideally rendered for most smart handheld phones. I have to assume most if not all would do so as you would just control the front-end (headers, CSS, HTML and javascript) to ensure it renders correctly...correct?
So, it Drupal a good option? And, is there anything else I am missing when choosing a CMS to deliver mobile web pages?
I think it depends on what kind of "rich mobile web based application" you are talking about. As far as rendering the front end for mobile devices go (such as screen size based UI etc.), so long the CMS allows you to control the stylesheets and JS flexibly that's all that matters.
The choice of the CMS itself depends on your own level of comfort also. Do take a look at Joomla! too
I think Drupal is Ok for your application but it has no built in support for mobile. I have worked with drupal but not with mobile web apps with Drupal. But Check this. It seems we can control the things as you expect.
Update: Check this as well
One thing to watch out for with Drupal is that the theme engine tends to be quite verbose. If you take a look at pretty much any Drupal site in something like Firebug, you'll quickly notice that it's full of nested-nested-nested-nested divs.
This makes it great for theming, since there's almost always an element, with a unique ID, to apply your CSS styles to. The downside is that it presents heavy, complex pages that could potentially cause problems for mobile browsers.
Related
I want to make a mobile friendly version of my website, but I have this dilemma.
What is better? Use CSS3 Media Queries to make main website responsive or detect if user is using a mobile and redirect to a new one (for example m.example.com).
This really is depending upon what kind of website you are having. Your decision will not only affect the way your site is presenting, but also how you would deliver business strategies (if it's a commercial thing).
Responsive design will work just great with simple websites that doesn't really need too many detailed experiences. Company profiles, or landing pages will fit best with RWD.
Once you're building much more complicated application, you might need to re-think how the user will interact with even the tiniest part of it. Note that using RWD often require greedier resources compared to a dedicated mobile site. If you're dealing with e-commerce, social media, or some other mature applications, a mobile version is a way to go.
I am wondering if there is a framework to develop mobile web applications which does not use javascript or jquery. Our client do not want to use any javascript or jquery in the projects. But when i look around for mobile web solutions, i see lots of jquery.
A "mobile" website does not require any special frameworks. You just have to design the site (HTML+CSS) so that it looks great on the smaller screens. Other than that it is the same old HTML forms as was 10 years ago (with the exception that you can use the new fancy HTML5 input types like calendar out of the box).
But you should dig deeper for the reasoning of "no JavaScript" since without it you will have to resort to whole page refreshes even for very small things (like 'hide field X when you choose USA in the address') and that will very negatively impact performance, especially on mobile devices where the network is slower.
If you use mobile MVC views, why use a framework? Why not create your own minimalist design that doesn't incorporate a lot of those features, but has the basic core HTML to define your user interface, and just allow the application to postback to the server? That would work well, and be efficient in mobile.
I have an existing website for schools and colleges management which is developed in ASP.NET,C# and SQL Server.
Now I am planning to support for the mobile applications (like basic models from Nokia/Samsung and for opera mobiles). I know the normal site we can access through some of the devices without any change, but needs to be optimized.
I am preparing another version which will be only few required fields and easy navigation for mobile. For that which method I need to use.
Normal ASPX files with optimized HTML code.
Or using WAP controls
Should I use HTML 5
Please help me to decide.
I recommend using the HTML5 templates(includes Modernizer) that come with ASP.NET MVC 3 and the jQuery Mobile framework. Let the jQuery Mobile framework do all the multi-device heavy lifting for you.
jQuery Mobile Supported Devices
you can use normal aspx pages without any issue. only thing you need to optimize the file size.
you can develop better solution using HTML5 but only problem is, it is not supporting all the devices.this is used html5
or just use any from List of mobile frameworks
You can use normal ASP.NET Web Forms in conjunction with HTML5. Take a look at HTML5Boilerplate which includes Modernizr.
Use a combination of feature detection and CSS Media Queries to serve up the appropriate files, layout and images for a particular mobile device.
Do not fall for "Responsive Web Design" techniques that cost too much in terms of performance and esthetics (basically re-skinning desktop browser version of site and calling it "mobile-ready"); disclosure: this links to blog post from me.
Use ASP.NET Mobile Controls: ASP.NET Mobile Controls
.. (i.e. How to add mobile pages to your asp.net site)
You will build a few UI controls, in a short amount of time, specifically for all mobile devices and it will be a much faster and much better user experience on mobile devices.
The UI renders minimal HTML and you control what gets rendered, meaning much less bandwidth required. Even though I have a 4G phone, so many times we are in a building that does not give a 4G signal and I much prefer sites that have mobile-specific output.
The UI is mobile-specific, users will not have to zoom around the page left/right up/down and zoom in to be able to click buttons or elements that were made for viewing in 1024x768 or higher.
Users with the latest 4G and dual core phones, and that happen to have 4G connection at the moment can always switch their phones into 'full HTML version' if they want more functionality than what you build using the ASP.NET mobile controls. However, if you go the other route and adopt JQuery-based or HTML5 code, you are excluding all previous generation phones from accessing your web site at all in many cases (besides it being slower and not as good a user experience as mobile-specific rendering). Even if you decide to focus only on the latest phones, you will also have to deal with html rendering issues, cross browser compatibility, besides the slow and UI complexity issues.
Good luck.
Using .NET Mobile Framework is always a good option as well as Web Forms which will appear on all mobile devices regardless of carrier/phone model, plus lots of phones support ajax, and other client side scripting that'll work. HTML5 is a growing standard though, and when more phones start supporting it, you'll reap tons of the new benefits.
Model View Controller is always good to follow. Allows for scalability and for components to be abstracted.
I am about to help a client develop a mobile version of their EPiServer site. The mobile version should have different functionality than the regular but some content might be shared so that it won't have be maintained twice.
I'm thinking about using jQuery Mobile as the user interface system to reach as many users as possible with the same solution and possibly 51degrees.mobi for best detection of mobile devices.
Does anyone have any experience in how to do this with EPiServer? How to structure? I'm thinking of using a sub-node (/mobile) that gets hidden on the regular site but I'm not sure it's the best solution.
If you want content in one place without having your editors work with "Fetch data from" a sub-node won't work.
The best option is probably to have "one content serve all" and have a cookie that says "mobile" OR "full site". The default mode can be determined by detection. If mobile is selected then you serve different CSS/JS or even other page properties or functionality.
Another option is to make use of the globalization mechanism and add "Mobile" as a language. This could be an easy way for editors to create separate mobile content if needed and keep the original content for other pages. I recall you can add different top domains for different languages without violating the license agreement so you could have a .mobi-name for the mobile "language".
Take a look at the following blog post:
IPhone Optimalization Made Easy
It demonstrates how to build mobile-friendly websites using HTML, conditional CSS and jquery - all in EPiServer
Have a look at this: http://www.epinova.no/blog/Anders-Murel/dates/2012/5/flexible-episerver-mobile-content-strategy-with-epinovamobiletemplateprovider/
I'm working on an ASP.NET website which targets desktop browsers. We want to enable an optional mobile view (e.g. http://m.sample.com) which will offer a few simple pages which will be mostly text. There will be not need for AJAX or even Javascript, and there's no user input - it's really just tables of text with a few links to navigate between the pages.
What's the best way to set this up so it will work on Blackberry, Windows Mobile, and iPhone?
Should I be looking at ASP.NET Mobile support, or just rolling my own pages?
UPDATE: This was for m.microsoftpdc.com. We went with the /Mobile subfolder approach, and used Scott Hanselman's iPhone tips for viewport and other stuff.
I have done this in the past and the way I did it is by separating the pages by creating a directory for Desktop and creating a directory for Mobile. This gives you better separation of the views, since in reality they are a lot different. In ASP.NET Forms I used the Model View Presenter pattern a lot since it went with the way ASP.NET Forms functioned the best. That way I could reuse some code between the two views. Then in your index.aspx page for the site, you just parse the user-agent string of the request to figure out the browser and redirect accordingly. So, for example a person with an iphone comes to your site, you parse the user-agent string and figure out it is an iphone. Then you redirect to m.sample.com which is pointing to Mobile/Index.aspx page. Otherwise you redirect to Desktop/Index.aspx.
I did the parsing of the user-agent string at the page level, but of course you could do this kind of logic in the HttpModule or HttpHandler level also.
Edit
I just rolled my own pages since we weren't targeting phones that have WML support. That would be the only reason in my opinion to use the ASP.NET Mobile support, is if you want to support WML enabled phones also.
You have only identified 3 handset 'platforms' as your target. One thing to consider is that there are a LOT more non-Blackberry / Windows Mobile / iPhone handsets out there and perhaps they will be the majority of your audience. (?)
From how you describe your application (JUST text), you should be able to hit pretty much any Internet-enabled cell phone out there, which is pretty much every phone sold in the last eight years.
Rolling your own will likely give you more control over how the content is displayed and navigated, which your users will appreciate, but you will lose much of the automatic formatting and advanced interaction capability that something like ASP.NET Mobile may give you. It is a trade-off that you might want to consider in light of where you anticipate your user community will go with this in the next 2 years.
Is it possible that they may ask for more of the desktop capability on the mobile side? If it is a likely 'yes' (even more so when I think of the 3 platforms you are targeting) then I'd recommend some automated formatting / enablement tool like ASP.NET mobile. If not, just roll your own and leave it simple and easy for your visitors to use.
I know from personal experience there really isn't much you need to do for the iPhone. I usually rather just browse your regular site with my iPhone.
Just my two cents though.
Different style sheets based on user agent will handle the "pretty". Are you using master pages? You could also set up different masters based on the device using device filters.
At Mix this year (2009) mdbf was announced. See this video or this blog post by Scott Hanselman for examples on using it to identify and redirect mobile browsers as needed.