Notes From Computers in Library 2012

I was interested in the three-day conference for technology in library particular in the tracks on mobile trends and web presence. Sine my supervisor attended the latter, I went into the topic on mobile trends. The speakers covered mostly on mobile apps and designing a separate a mobile web site. The strategy is to offered only contents that mobile users would want. One speaker went as far as providing a device-detection javascript with a whole list of variable for every mobile device. The easiest way to make a mobile-friendly site is to provide a css file to hide all the big, unnecessary design elements on the desktop site. One speaker mentioned mobile-first design, but didn’t really give responsive web design its justice. While the conference was informative, the library folks need some catching up to do.

I also signed up for a post conference workshop on taking Drupal to the next step. Unfortunately the workshop was only three hours and the instructors spent the first half an hour install Drupal and modules on people laptops. We didn’t get very far and I wanted to see how to create a theme. It looks like the best approach is to take a base theme and modify it to meet your needs. I took a look at some of the starter theme and there are tons of php and css files to customize. I’ll take a crack at theming Drupal one of these days, but right now MODX seems like the best choice for really coding the site the way I wanted.