Joomla vs. Plone: The Mobile UI Showdown

[JCarswell]

There is some irrational exuberance gathering around replacing Plone with Joomla at our institution and I'd like some help quelling it.

We have a group that is making the usual arguments for moving to a PHP-based CMS, and for the most part these are easy to counter. However, I have no experience in developing mobile interfaces and one of the points for moving to Joomla is that this particular group already has a mobile ui solution (how that's totally relevant I haven't quite figured out, but anyway...).

So, I am trying to figure out how to go about designing a mobile front-end for our Plone 2.5 sites and not finding a lot of information out there so far. I posted in the UI group a month or so ago and didn't get much back, so I was wondering if any of you are starting to look at this at your institutions and whether you have any info that could get me started.

Thanks in advance!

[ajung]

On 29.04.2009 6:50 Uhr, JCarswell wrote:

> There is some irrational exuberance gathering around replacing Plone with
> Joomla at our institution and I'd like some help quelling it.
>
> We have a group that is making the usual arguments for moving to a PHP-based
> CMS, and for the most part these are easy to counter. However, I have no
> experience in developing mobile interfaces and one of the points for moving
> to Joomla is that this particular group already has a mobile ui solution
> (how that's totally relevant I haven't quite figured out, but anyway...).
>
> So, I am trying to figure out how to go about designing a mobile front-end
> for our Plone 2.5 sites and not finding a lot of information out there so
> far. I posted in the UI group a month or so ago and didn't get much back, so
> I was wondering if any of you are starting to look at this at your
> institutions and whether you have any info that could get me started.

Plone has already a dedicated stylesheet for hand-helds since a longer
period of time.
Not good enough? If you need a dedicated strip-down UI then the first
thing is to decide
which functionality you want to make available and how. Writing a
custom-stripped down theme
should be less effort than writing a full custom Plone theme.

-aj

[lists.vcf]

---

begin:vcard
fn:Andreas Jung
n:Jung;Andreas
org:ZOPYX Ltd. & Co. KG
adr;quoted-printable:;;Charlottenstr. 37/1;T=C3=BCbingen;;72070;Germany
email;internet:[hidden email]
title:CEO
tel;work:[phone]
tel;fax:[phone]
tel;home:[phone]
x-mozilla-html:FALSE
url:www.zopyx.com
version:2.1
end:vcard

---

_______________________________________________
Educational mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/educational

[Eric Steele (esteele)]

JCarswell wrote:

There is some irrational exuberance gathering around replacing Plone with Joomla at our institution and I'd like some help quelling it.

We have a group that is making the usual arguments for moving to a PHP-based CMS, and for the most part these are easy to counter. However, I have no experience in developing mobile interfaces and one of the points for moving to Joomla is that this particular group already has a mobile ui solution (how that's totally relevant I haven't quite figured out, but anyway...).

So, I am trying to figure out how to go about designing a mobile front-end for our Plone 2.5 sites and not finding a lot of information out there so far. I posted in the UI group a month or so ago and didn't get much back, so I was wondering if any of you are starting to look at this at your institutions and whether you have any info that could get me started.

Thanks in advance!

We'd developed a stripped-down theme product, Mobilize, for Plone 2.5. It doesn't seem to be listed on Plone.org any longer for whatever reason, but it's available from our svn at https://weblion.psu.edu/svn/weblion/weblion/Mobilize/tags/0.2/

Hope that helps.

Eric

[JCarswell]

Andreas Jung-5 wrote:

If you need a dedicated strip-down UI then the first thing is to decide which functionality you want to make available and how. Writing a custom-stripped down theme should be less effort than writing a full custom Plone theme.

Yes, that makes sense. That will probably take the most time of all.

[JCarswell]

Eric Steele (esteele) wrote:

We'd developed a stripped-down theme product, Mobilize, for Plone 2.5. It doesn't seem to be listed on Plone.org any longer for whatever reason, but it's available from our svn at https://weblion.psu.edu/svn/weblion/weblion/Mobilize/tags/0.2/

Hope that helps.

Eric

This helps a lot! Is this still an active product? If so, I would be glad to provide any useful feedback.

[Eric Steele (esteele)]

JCarswell wrote:

Eric Steele (esteele) wrote:

We'd developed a stripped-down theme product, Mobilize, for Plone 2.5. It doesn't seem to be listed on Plone.org any longer for whatever reason, but it's available from our svn at https://weblion.psu.edu/svn/weblion/weblion/Mobilize/tags/0.2/

Hope that helps.

Eric

This helps a lot! Is this still an active product? If so, I would be glad to provide any useful feedback.

It's active in that there's a Plone 3 version in the works. As far as I'm aware, it's a complete rewrite. We'd be happy to hear any feedback you've got ([e-mail] or #weblion on freenode.net)

[pumazi]

Eric Steele (esteele) wrote:

JCarswell wrote:

Eric Steele (esteele) wrote:

We'd developed a stripped-down theme product, Mobilize, for Plone 2.5. It doesn't seem to be listed on Plone.org any longer for whatever reason, but it's available from our svn at https://weblion.psu.edu/svn/weblion/weblion/Mobilize/tags/0.2/

Hope that helps.

Eric

This helps a lot! Is this still an active product? If so, I would be glad to provide any useful feedback.

It's active in that there's a Plone 3 version in the works. As far as I'm aware, it's a complete rewrite. We'd be happy to hear any feedback you've got ([e-mail] or #weblion on freenode.net)

We are working on a Plone 3 version of Mobilize that will provide rule based theme selection.  The rules will be queries against the wurfl database (see: http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/ ).  The flow of things goes something like:
1) User visits Plone site (example.com), where the mobilize viewlet querys the request against the mobile rules.  Rules are made up of criteria like... Where device is a Treo and provides a color screen, redirect to treo.example.com. ... If screen size is greater than or equal to 320px redirect to bigmobile.example.com ... Where device is gray scale and less than 100px, redirect to nosite4u.example.com
2) The most specific match will be selected for redirect.
3) The user will be redirected to the mobile friendly site specified in the rule (eg. iphone.example.com).
*) From our research and best practices, it would probably be best to use a separate domain to redirect mobile requests to so that the mobile version can be cached separate from the main site. Using a separate domain may also allow you the ability to use separate skinning technologies like deliverance.
*) The mobilize viewlet only runs once, because it will set a cookie that is check before running the query. In addition, the user will have the ability to manually select the mobile view or full view via a site actions link.

I'd be interestedd in thoughts about the above process. Please feel free to contribute if you can.

-Michael Mulich (pumazi)

[Nathan Van Gheem]

You may want to look into deliverance.  It could make your life super easy for this whole process.

On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 10:22 PM, pumazi <[hidden email]> wrote:

Eric Steele (esteele) wrote:
>
>
>
> JCarswell wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> Eric Steele (esteele) wrote:
>>>
>>> We'd developed a stripped-down theme product, Mobilize, for Plone 2.5.
>>> It doesn't seem to be listed on Plone.org any longer for whatever
>>> reason, but it's available from our svn at
>>> https://weblion.psu.edu/svn/weblion/weblion/Mobilize/tags/0.2/
>>>
>>> Hope that helps.
>>>
>>> Eric
>>>
>>
>> This helps a lot! Is this still an active product? If so, I would be glad
>> to provide any useful feedback.
>>
>
> It's active in that there's a Plone 3 version in the works. As far as I'm
> aware, it's a complete rewrite. We'd be happy to hear any feedback you've
> got ([hidden email] or #weblion on freenode.net)
>

We are working on a Plone 3 version of Mobilize that will provide rule based
theme selection.  The rules will be queries against the wurfl database (see:
http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/ ).  The flow of things goes something like:
1) User visits Plone site (example.com), where the mobilize viewlet querys
the request against the mobile rules.  Rules are made up of criteria like...
Where device is a Treo and provides a color screen, redirect to
treo.example.com. ... If screen size is greater than or equal to 320px
redirect to bigmobile.example.com ... Where device is gray scale and less
than 100px, redirect to nosite4u.example.com
2) The most specific match will be selected for redirect.
3) The user will be redirected to the mobile friendly site specified in the
rule (eg. iphone.example.com).
*) From our research and best practices, it would probably be best to use a
separate domain to redirect mobile requests to so that the mobile version
can be cached separate from the main site. Using a separate domain may also
allow you the ability to use separate skinning technologies like
deliverance.
*) The mobilize viewlet only runs once, because it will set a cookie that is
check before running the query. In addition, the user will have the ability
to manually select the mobile view or full view via a site actions link.

I'd be interestedd in thoughts about the above process. Please feel free to
contribute if you can.

-Michael Mulich (pumazi)

--
View this message in context: http://n2.nabble.com/Joomla-vs.-Plone%3A-The-Mobile-UI-Showdown-tp2738625p3057809.html

Sent from the Education mailing list archive at Nabble.com.


_______________________________________________
Educational mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/educational

_______________________________________________
Educational mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/educational

[pumazi]

Mobilize will be using processed "logic" to determine an HTTP redirect.  Deliverance does not make these type of request based decisions.

-Michael Mulich (pumazi)

Nathan Van Gheem wrote:

You may want to look into deliverance.  It could make your life super easy
for this whole process.

...

pumazi wrote:

We are working on a Plone 3 version of Mobilize that will provide rule
based
theme selection.  The rules will be queries against the wurfl database
(see:
http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/ ).  The flow of things goes something like:
1) User visits Plone site (example.com), where the mobilize viewlet querys
the request against the mobile rules.  Rules are made up of criteria
like...
Where device is a Treo and provides a color screen, redirect to
treo.example.com. ... If screen size is greater than or equal to 320px
redirect to bigmobile.example.com ... Where device is gray scale and less
than 100px, redirect to nosite4u.example.com
2) The most specific match will be selected for redirect.
3) The user will be redirected to the mobile friendly site specified in the
rule (eg. iphone.example.com).
*) From our research and best practices, it would probably be best to use a
separate domain to redirect mobile requests to so that the mobile version
can be cached separate from the main site. Using a separate domain may also
allow you the ability to use separate skinning technologies like
deliverance.
*) The mobilize viewlet only runs once, because it will set a cookie that
is
check before running the query. In addition, the user will have the ability
to manually select the mobile view or full view via a site actions link.

I'd be interestedd in thoughts about the above process. Please feel free to
contribute if you can.

-Michael Mulich (pumazi)

[pumazi]

JCarswell wrote:

There is some irrational exuberance gathering around replacing Plone with Joomla at our institution and I'd like some help quelling it.

We have a group that is making the usual arguments for moving to a PHP-based CMS, and for the most part these are easy to counter. However, I have no experience in developing mobile interfaces and one of the points for moving to Joomla is that this particular group already has a mobile ui solution (how that's totally relevant I haven't quite figured out, but anyway...).

So, I am trying to figure out how to go about designing a mobile front-end for our Plone 2.5 sites and not finding a lot of information out there so far. I posted in the UI group a month or so ago and didn't get much back, so I was wondering if any of you are starting to look at this at your institutions and whether you have any info that could get me started.

Thanks in advance!

To anyone that is interested... I've made a prototype of Mobilize.[1]  This version of Mobilize is very different from past versions... it is WSGI middleware package and does not provide a theme like Products.Mobilize did in the past.  The goal of this package is partly to provide you with a flexible solution.

Check out the README.  If you are interested in giving it a go, I've got a paster ini configuration in the weblion svn that you can use.[2]  For further instructions, just let me know if you're interested.  

-Michael Mulich (pumazi)

[1] https://weblion.psu.edu/trac/weblion/browser/users/mrm41/Mobilize
[2] https://weblion.psu.edu/trac/weblion/browser/users/mrm41/mob