Err, Magento Mobile?
Saturday, 02 October 2010While Magento has introduced its new Magento Mobile platform, we glared at an article in a Dutch IT-magazine which basically states that most mobile users don't want to use a specific app, they actually want the webpage to function correctly on their mobile. So, is Magento Mobile really what we need?
Accessing your favorite shop on your mobile
One of the things we were thinking about was how we ourselves visit shops and expect shops to behave on our mobile. While we might be ordering groceries on a weekly basis, a lot of the shops we visit are visited not that frequently: And most likely you are not going to install a mobile app just for that one time - unless installing the app is done automatically once you visit the shop.
It seems there is a missing gap, that could easily be filled with what is already out there: Mobile websites. There are already a lot of webtechnologies optimized for mobiles, but with Magento this is still in an early stage. Magento itself has focussed on an app-solution, but slowly we of Yireo are thinking of a web-based Magento solution.
Err, MageBridge Mobile?
Of course we have been thinking already about a MageBridge Mobile product. The main idea here is to use a Joomla! template to quickly modify the appearance of your site. Also, you can easily create your own topmenu using the Joomla! Menu Manager. MageBridge then fetches the catalog from Magento. While we could use our own MageBridge Mobile theme, actually the iPhone theme is there already.
MageBridge Mobile will primarily be a smart combination of the current webtools in Joomla! and Magento. Things like browser detection, templating, etcetera are already in place, but only need to be put together to make it easier to build your own mobile site.
Challenges of MageBridge Mobile
There are still some challenges however: For instance, Magento uses the ProtoType JavaScript-framework and this framework is actually too large for mobile connections. Replacing it with jQuery (perhaps including JQTouch) would be great but requires a lot of work.
Another challenge is the actual payment. We haven't read ourselves into it yet, but the new PayPal Mobile technologies would allow for really cool and easy checkouts. But perhaps the default Magento theme needs modifications. We hope to solve these challenges soon to present you with MageBridge Mobile: Easy setup of your mobile websites.