Mobile Development on Drupal

Drupal and the Mobile Revolution

In today's society, it has become the everyday norm for people to carry multiple electronic devices that are internet "ready". Now, more than ever, it has become important for companies to not only develop a more engaging presence on the internet but to have that strategy include technologies to display their products on mobile devices. Developers are starting to take note of the trend of consumers beginning to make more and more purchases from their mobile devices, not desktops or even laptops.  The challenge to developers is to design websites that can be easily accessible on multiple devices, platforms, operating systems, and screen resolutions.

Website designers and developers have always struggled to have their content displayed statically across browser platforms. Firefox does not display content in the exact same way that Internet Explorer does, nor does Opera to Chrome.  It is a big challenge for designers to display websites in the way they would on your desktop vs your Android.  Display aspect ratios are all different and this can lead to frustrating developers and worst of all their users. Frustrating your customer base with an underdeveloped website can lead to loss of sales and worse of all loss of revenue.
 

Drupal's Various Mobile Benefits

     Drupal is a perfect platform for desktop and mobile development. Drupal CMS, has one million users and has been actively updated since 1999. In constant development and updating, Drupal allows webmasters to be continually updated with themes that are optimized for mobile display.   Chances are if you surf regularly, you have used a website in which Drupal was responsible for displaying and managing the content.  One of the best features of Drupal is that the software is open source, allowing users to create "add-ons" such as themes and security plug-ins.

     One method developers use to display content on mobile devices is called Responsive Design technique. This technique includes the ability for the website user to re-size the browser window and zoom in and out without the content being distorted or hard to read.  Another responsive design technique is to have navigational menus that drop down into "sub-menus", this allows for skinner websites that fit smaller aspect ratio's.  The biggest function of Responsive Design is the way images are served.  Drupal will tell the website server what browser and what device the user is trying to access the website with.  If the device is a mobile, the CMS knows it can serve them a smaller size image which will help speed up the page load time.  It is important that your potential client is not forced to endure long wait periods between pages.  

  Accessibility should be your main focus when it comes to choosing or developing a mobile theme for your website.  Allowing for easy navigation with well-placed menu’s and fast load times can help to ensure positive responses from your users.  There are many great ways you can harness the technologies of Drupal for your mobile theme solutions.
Contact us if you have any additional questions about Drupal development for mobile.