Drupal and the mobile world
With computers in our pockets becoming the next common device I started to wonder how drupal will fit into the picture. Some questions that I started to think about.
Apple iPhone app?
Android app?
Website app?
But what if the person is stuck with no internet?
Does the site need a special layout/theme.
There are pros and cons to both for sure.
iPhone/Android app
- pros
- quick
- style
- easy to integrate into hardware (camera, image uploads, accelerometer etc, location)
- cons
- need two versions one for each
- programming in objective c or java
- app store process
Web Version
- pros
- do not have to learn a new language
- can relase and update with out the iphone app store delay
- cons
- offline can be a little tricky but not impossible using html 5.
- some limits to hardware integration and filesystem (try uploading an image)
Some items that I have noticed seem valuable in these areas
1. Drupal and the iPhone App
One big news item was the
http://drupal.org/node/659772
the "Drupal + Services Module + Beer = BeerCloud on Android and iPhone" app.
This was a great use of Drupal for the website and an iPhone app (with a local database)
for an offline online experience. Note for Android and iPhone
2. Drupal and pure web interface (html, jquery etc)
This is exciting. All the ease of jquery now on the iphone and android http://www.jqtouch.com/
3. Then there is Apples http://www.nxfx.com/blog/iphone-development/apples-pastry-kit-iphone-jav... Pastry Kit
4. http://phonegap.com/ though now sure how it will be effected by Apple OS 4.x
5. http://www.appcelerator.com/products/
6. A good example of mobile html http://m.mit.edu/about/
7. Good example of menus for a mobile screen. (thanks David Hamilton)
http://www.filamentgroup.com/lab/jquery_ipod_style_and_flyout_menus/
8. Word press leading the way http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wptouch/screenshots/ 
Drupal modules that area available
- Domain module mixed with the Mobile tools is what I used on the www.rvtc.us site. The domain module makes it easy to quickly configure different home pages, views, urls etc. The Mobile tools make it easy to do this as well. The two together was my solution for now as I was working on a few ideas. But Mobile Tools alone might be enough.
- Browsecap Provides statistics on browsers and a replacement for PHPs get_browser() function.
Required by: Mobile Theme (enabled) - Mobile Theme adds a setting for choosing the mobile theme.
- Theme - iDrupalUI
Books
- And some books about the topic http://my.safaribooksonline.com/9781449382544 (video and book)
Comments best offered here http://twitter.com/rvtctweat
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Author Profile
Not counting my Commodore 64 years, I began my IT career when Windows 95 hit the scene and Google was just a glimmer on the Californian horizon. I discovered Drupal four years ago when it was giving Joomla a run for its money.
At the time, I was working as the IT manager at the National Priorities Project (NPP). We were using Joolma and getting about 200,000 visitors a month and the site was not scaling well. I saw the limits of Joomla and the promise of Drupal 4 with its taxonomy system, clean urls, and security features. I converted NPP to Drupal and migrated their main database, http://nationalpriorities.org/nppdatabase_tool, from webobjects to a Drupal-friendly structure in MySQL. Still not satisfied, I moved NPP’s constituent data (including their 25,000 member email list) out of the expensive Raiser's Edge and into the free and open source CiviCRM 1.8, saving the company money that it was spending on their desktop software.
Thus began my commitment to supporting non-profits by creating affordable, custom-built content management systems in Drupal and CiviCRM. I founded River Valley Tech Collective as a collaborative team of other like-minded techies to provide Drupal-driven sites to a wider range of non-profits, educational institutions and local community organizations.
