Everyone wants to have a presence on mobile devices, but do you have to have an app to be there? There is the strategy that if you design your website with mobile in mind, you won't need to have a different website for mobile phones or tablets--your regular website will respond and display appropriately for the viewing device. There is a wonderful resourceful website that was launched recently that explains this concept. See http://responsivedesign.ca , launched by the folks at http://FosterInteractive.ca (a company here in Toronto).

Having heard a couple of talks about responsive and adaptive themes, I decided to try an adaptive Drupal Theme. This site is currently using the Sky theme, which is based on the Adaptive Base Theme. This theme adapts well to display on my smartphone. No zooming or shrinking required; just scroll and read. The Sky theme has many configurable options including changing colours and fonts (allows easy configuration of Google webfonts).

Today in the newspaper, The Toronto Star advertised a new app, wheels.ca. I thought, it looks like a regular website url, maybe this is a responsive website, but it really is just an app only works on the iPad platform. If you try the url on your smartphone browser, you'll be redirected to the regular website (which you'll have to zoom to read) which was designed to be viewed on a desktop monitor.

An interesting practical example of a responsive web design is http://clearmenu.com which is a demo site launched by Unit Interactive. It shows some example restaurant menus that change layout depending on the viewing device. View it from a smart phone or an e-reader or a tablet. Same information, but modified to display in a practical way on different devices.

Responsive web design ... something to explore further.