Mobile for Drupal 8

In my State of Drupal keynote in Chicago I said: "If I were to start Drupal from scratch today, I'd build it for mobile experiences first, and desktop experience second.". I believe in that more than ever.

We already have a number of initiatives under way that will make Drupal a great platform for building native mobile applications (e.g. the Web services initiative) as well for building mobile web experiences (e.g. the HTML5 initiative and theDesign initiative).

However, there is more that needs to be done to make Drupal a go to platform in a mobile world. For example, a couple of weeks ago I talked to a number of big media companies, each employing hundreds of editorial staff. They all believed that in less than two years, most of their editors that report from the field will be using tablets instead of laptops. Applied to Drupal, this means we need to make the Drupal administration back-end and the editorial experience mobile-friendly, something that isn't covered by the existing Drupal 8 initiatives. Another example would be responsive web design.

The mobile internet is coming at us fast and furious. We need to move fast and we might only get one shot at this. I want to make mobile the big theme for Drupal 8. That is why I decided to launch another initiative related to mobile.

I've asked John Albin Wilkins to be the Initiative Owner for the Drupal 8 Mobile Initiative, and to work with the existing initiatives to fill the remaining gaps. To learn what that means, please consult John's announcement blog post, which includes an overview of the initiatives' goals. Like with any of these initiatives, they don't actually materialize unless people decide to help. To get involved, please join the discussions in the Mobile group on groups.drupal.org and help work on Mobile issues on drupal.org.

HTML5 in Drupal 8

HTML5 is about to rock our world. There are books written about why that is the case, but simply put, it can provide a much better user experience on both desktop and mobile devices, and could lead to a convergence between native applications and the mobile web.

I believe in HTML5 enough that I wanted to make it one of the top 5 initiatives for Drupal 8; and switch Drupal's default doctype from XHTML to HTML5. This is the fifth official Drupal 8 initiative after the Configuration Management, Design, Web Services and Multilingual initiatives.

I have asked Jacine Luisi to be the Initiative Owner for the Drupal 8 HTML5 Initiative. Jacine is a prolific themer and contributor known to be a markup/CSS nut. I'd also like to recognize Jen Simmons for all her evangelism work on HTML5 in Drupal. I hope that work continues as it can feed into the HTML5 Core Initiative.

The way we'll approach this initiative is by starting off with some of the low-hanging fruit, and gradually work our way up to more advanced parts of the specification. In her announcement blog post, Jacine provides a plan for what that means.

To keep track of what is going on, tune into the core issue queue on issues tagged HTML5 or participate in the HTML5 group. Details will be posted shortly on the core initiative homepage.

Drupal in a tablet world

A few years ago, computer tablets similar to Apple's iPad were props in science fiction films. Only a couple of years from now, tablets might be among the most popular consumer electronics ever.

It took less than three months to sell the first 3 million iPads. This has made the iPad the consumer electronics device with the fastest adoption rate of all time. Compare that with the 1 million iPhones sold in the first three months of its release, and the 350,000 DVD players sold in the first year of their mass production.

According to CNBC, the iPad will surpass gaming equipment and the cellular phone to become the fourth most popular consumer electronics category -- televisions, smart phones, and notebook computers are the top three. Large companies like Hewlett Packard have no choice but to design credible alternatives to the iPad. Samsung will soon begin to distribute their Galaxy Tab, which runs on Android OS, in Europe and the U.S. Once these big players enter the market fully, it's pretty clear that we're heading to a new lifestyle in which everyone and his dog owns a tablet. I already have mine.

This all begs the question: in a world of tablets and mobile handheld devices, what do we need to do so that Drupal will be a go-to platform? How can Drupal contribute so as to be a player in the ever-expanding ecosystem of tablets and mobile phones? What needs to change so that developers can build easily tablet and mobile phone optimized applications on top of Drupal? At the rate that tablets and mobile devices are being adopted, we don't have much time to get in motion. Drupal 7 takes enormous steps in the right direction, and I have a some ideas for Drupal 8. However, I'd like to get your take first ...

Thoughts?

Spark update: mobile administration in Drupal

Today, I'd like to share an HTML/JS prototype we've created for a mobile toolbar and dashboard for Drupal that we hope to include as part of the Spark distribution and then propose for Drupal 8 core as part of the Drupal 8 Mobile Initiaitve.

Drupal 7's default administration tools (e.g. Toolbar module and Shortcut module) were not designed in a “mobile first" way, and as such can be difficult to work with on tablets or smartphones. For example, here is a screenshot of what happens to the Toolbar and Shortcut modules when using a responsive version of the Bartik theme on an iPhone:

On an iPhone or other mobile device, the default Drupal 7 toolbar and shortcut bars both wrap, taking up nearly a third of the screen.

Kevin O'Leary from the Spark team has come up with the following design. The toolbar design in particular takes heavy inspiration from efforts by Lewis Nymanand his mobile navigation prototype.

We set out to do justice to the complexites of Drupal's administration layer while accounting for the constantly evolving universe of devices. We think what we've come up with is scalable, responsive, and usable.

Here is Preston So, author of the prototype, demonstrating the functionality in a short, 7 minute video:

As we begin work on this feature, it will live at the Mobile friendly navigation toolbar project as a contributed module for Drupal 7 first. If these changes are well-received, I hope we can target this functionality for Drupal 8 core, as a replacement for the Toolbar and Shortcut modules.

Spark update: in-line editing in Drupal

The goal of the Spark distribution is to incubate authoring experience improvements in a Drupal 7 and Drupal 8. It was announced earlier this month, and since then we've been hard at work on initial research and design.

The Spark team's primary focus is on improving Drupal's content authoring and editing experience, and the first feature we're prioritizing is in-place editing: the ability to edit content, menus, etc. directly on the page, without the need to navigate to a separate edit form. Think of it as "true" WYSIWYG.

Members of Acquia's design team spent time analyzing how some of the most widely adopted Open Source as well as proprietary CMSs do in-place editing. We then prototyped some initial ideas, and performed usability testing on those prototypes to see what works and what doesn't. After a number of iterations, we're happy to report that the usability testing has validated Spark's general design direction. People loved the prototype. Now is a good time for us to share our initial prototype and to solicit further feedback from the community so we can shift gears into implementation.

The following 5-minute video walks through the HTML/JS prototype, and also provides a bit of background on the Spark project:

Our goal is to deliver this functionality in a contributed module for Drupal 7 first and foremost, which will live at the In-Place Editing project on drupal.org. This module will be bundled into the Spark distribution. Depending on how it is received, I hope we can also target this functionality for Drupal 8 core.

From a technical architecture standpoint, we are currently in the process ofselecting the WYSIWYG editor to use in Spark for in-place editing of HTML content. For now, we plan to focus on supporting only the Filtered/Full HTML text formats in order to get us to something testable faster.

Later, we are hoping to branch out into other areas of authoring experience too, including helping with the content creation form improvements that the Drupal usability team has been spear-heading, as are well as the layouts UI work being actively discussed in the usability group. The Drupal usability team is doing an incredible job with these issues, and once fully staffed, I would like to see the Spark team help implement these improvements for Drupal 8 and backport them to Drupal 7 so we can ship it with the Spark distribution. (Did I mention that the Spark team is hiring? ;-))

As you can see, things are starting to move along quite nicely. Please join the discussion in the Spark issue queue if this functionality sounds exciting to you and you'd like to help!

Announcing Spark: authoring improvements for Drupal 7 and Drupal 8

At DrupalCon Denver, I announced the need for a strong focus on Drupal's authoring experience in my State of Drupal presentation. During my core conversation later in the week, I announced the creation of a Drupal 7 distribution named "Spark" (formerly code-named "Phoenix"). The goal of Spark is to act as an incubator for Drupal 8 authoring experience improvements that can be tested in the field.

I hope for Spark to provide a "safe space" to prototype cutting-edge interface design and to build excellent content tools that are comparable with the experience of proprietary alternatives. While not a final list, some initial thinking around the features we want to experiment with is:

• Inline editing and drag-and-drop content layout tools ("true" WYSIWYG)
• Enhanced content creation: auto-save, save as draft and more
• Useful dashboards for content creators
• Mobile content authoring and administration support

The vision behind the Spark distribution is to be "the Pressflow of Drupal authoring experience". Pressflow provided a "spoon" of Drupal 6 with various performance enhancements that made their way into Drupal 7 core while it was in development. The same improvements were made available to Drupal 6 users so they could easily be tested in the field. With Spark, we want to test authoring experience improvements in Drupal 7 on real sites with real users and real content. We also want to target the best improvements for inclusion into Drupal 8 core.

I'm excited to announce that Acquia will fund the Spark distribution. Core developers Gábor Hojtsy and Wim Leers will work on Spark full-time starting in late May. They will work along side Angie Byron (webhchick), Alex Bronstein(effulgentsia), myself and other members at Acquia. While we have some promising candidates so far, Acquia is still seeking applicants to join the Spark team (with a strong preference to candidates located in or willing to move to the Boston area):

• Drupal UX Interaction Designer, who can conceptualize and prototype cutting-edge interface design.
• Senior Front-End Engineer, who eats, sleeps, and breaths JavaScript and jQuery (Drupal experience optional).

The Spark team will collaborate with the Drupal usability and the core development teams.

Spark update: WYSIWYG editing for Drupal

After a lot of discussion and testing, we decided to adopt the Aloha Editor as the WYSIWYG editor for Spark, and possibly for Drupal 8 core. Check out Wim's blog for the details. In short, it is the best HTML5 based WYSIWYG editor; fast, well-written and future-proof.

Here is a screenshot of our latest designs of how we envision integrating the Aloha Editor in Spark on a mobile device:

By tapping into a rich text field such as Body, a toolbar comes up with two tabs with editor buttons below: Format (containing buttons such as Bold, Italic, Left/Right Align, and Lists) and Insert (for Links, Images, and the like).

I also wanted to give a big thank you to Haymo Meran, creator of Aloha Editor and Director of Product Experience at Gentics Software GmbH, both for hosting a Drupal/Aloha collaboration sprint at his company's offices in Vienna last month, and also for changing the license of Aloha Editor to GPLv2+ (from AGPLv3) so that it could be used with Drupal!

It's an incredible gift to the Drupal project and the Open Source community at large. Thanks!