Creating a Web site that supports the wide variety of mobile devices and browsers being used today is a daunting task. A mobile device could be anything from a standard feature flip phone to a smart phone, or even a tablet. The boundry lines between mobilie devices and netbooks / laptops is getting blurred.

Following are the features that I would like to see for mobile site development:

1. Mobile device detection helps determine the capabilities of the device. While the WURFL (Wireless Uniform Resource FIle) database is current, the WURFL module lacks a Drupal 7.x version. Consequently, responsibility for device detection, if provided, falls onto the module that switches themes for mobile devices.
2. While the PC world has just a few Web browsers, the world of mobile devices has over 50 browsers, with differing capabilities. A single mobile device, even feature cell phones, may support multiple mobile browsers. Design of the Web site needs to account for the limitations of these browsers.
3. While a simple mobile theme is better than no mobile theme, the ideal would be to have a mobile theme that adapts to the device and browser capabilities. Touch screen devices present another level of complexity. As touch screen devices become more popular, the importance of supporting the features of these devices becomes more important.
4. When the mobile switcher module detects a mobile device, or mobile browser, it should automatically switch the user to the mobile therme.
5. The page should contain a like that allows the user to manually switch between mobile and standard themes.
6. Content additions and changes should automatically appear in both the standard and normal themes. Maintaining two different tracks quickly leads to different content. The goal is for the user to see the same content from different devices, recognizing the limits of mobile devices.

With the above in mind, it is time to check the current state of Drupal 7.x.

Mobile by Mobify

All the mobile configuration occurs in your account at mobify.me. Mobify Studio is the Web-based tool for designing a mobile web page, and it has improved a great deal, since I started using it. For this site, the URL at mobify.me is http://mobilesoftwaredev.mobify.me/. To test this solution, I modified the DNS so that m.mobilesoftwaredev.com and www.mobilesoftware.mobi redirect to this mobify.me. All this works just fine. The problem with Mobile by Mobify is the mobify module. It still does not work with Drupal 7.x.

Mobile Theme

The  Mobile theme has a broken image link, but that is easy to fix. The bigger problem is that the mobile_theme module has an error that keeps it from detecting the browser. Plus, there is no configuration options for the module. Without a configuration module, how is it going to know which mobile theme to use. It would be a simple solution, if it worked.

Mobile Tools

This module has the promise of being a very flexible solution for developing mobile software sites. It is still available as a development release, with all the caveates of using a development release. Today, there was a critical error that prevented it from working at all. The Browscap module is also only available as a development release, and still has problems. The Fustion theme is also only available as a development release, as is the skinr module. The skinr module caused me a lot of grief today. I finally had to resort to modifying the database to remove it.

Conclusion

Mobile Web site development under Drupal 7.x is making progress, but still not ready for even basic functionality. At this point, I am depending on DNS to redirect traffic to mobify.me. I still need to find an easy way to put in a link that allows the user to select the mobile or desktop site depending on which one they are using. At this time, it looks like it is going Mobile by Mobify or Mobile Tools. Mobile Tools should allow me to use mobify.me as well as a Drupal Mobile Theme. The real challenge is going to be touch screens, but need to have basic mobile functionality working first.