Would Drupal be a viable CMS for a mobile web application?

Question

I am evaluating open-source CMS systems to see which one(s) would be the best option to deliver rich mobile web based applications for mobile handhelds.

So far I am leaning towards Drupal because it seems to be the most extensible, flexible, best performance (cache & compression, etc) and has a good user management system.

The CMS must be able to deliver HTML content that is ideally rendered for most smart handheld phones. I have to assume most if not all would do so as you would just control the front-end (headers, CSS, HTML and javascript) to ensure it renders correctly...correct?

So, it Drupal a good option? And, is there anything else I am missing when choosing a CMS to deliver mobile web pages?

Answer 1

I think Drupal is Ok for your application but it has no built in support for mobile. I have worked with drupal but not with mobile web apps with Drupal. But Check this. It seems we can control the things as you expect.

Update: Check this as well

Answer 2

I think it depends on what kind of "rich mobile web based application" you are talking about. As far as rendering the front end for mobile devices go (such as screen size based UI etc.), so long the CMS allows you to control the stylesheets and JS flexibly that's all that matters.

The choice of the CMS itself depends on your own level of comfort also. Do take a look at Joomla! too

Answer 3

One thing to watch out for with Drupal is that the theme engine tends to be quite verbose. If you take a look at pretty much any Drupal site in something like Firebug, you'll quickly notice that it's full of nested-nested-nested-nested divs.

This makes it great for theming, since there's almost always an element, with a unique ID, to apply your CSS styles to. The downside is that it presents heavy, complex pages that could potentially cause problems for mobile browsers.