Mobile Joomla is the most popular mobile solution listed on the Joomla Extension Directory. The Joomla component optimizes the display and delivery of Joomla websites for all mobile devices. These days, Mobile Joomla is announcing a Pro version of their service, due to launch within a few days. The Pro version is aimed at professional users who want more flexibility in customizing and maintaining their mobile sites.
I had a chance to catch up with Ugur Kaner and Miikka Kukkosuo to learn more about the release of Mobile Joomla Pro.
How is Mobile Joomla doing, and why are you releasing a Pro version?
Miikka: Mobile Joomla community is growing very fast. We're well over 120,000 registered users. The mobile market is also booming; there are already 6,2 billion mobile subscriptions in the world, and mobile data accounts for 20% of total North American web traffic. We're definitely seeing more and more people realizing the need to provide mobile-optimized websites.
Ugur: Our product strategy has always been based on user experience with clean, simple and eye-candy, while providing extra "under-the-hood" options for advanced users. Over time, we came up with a number of new things we wanted to build, and we've also been requested some features. So there was a natural path to Mobile Joomla Pro. The Mobile Joomla itself is and will remain free as always though.
What are the most important features of Mobile Joomla Pro?
Miikka: One of the questions we've heard a lot along the way is: "How do I test my mobile site? How does it look like?". Based on this, Mobile Joomla Pro has a built-in online device simulator, with which you can see and test your mobile site directly on various devices. Another major feature is remote device detection. You know, there are new mobile devices introduced to the market every week, so one needs to update the server device database constantly to make sure the new devices will be recognized correctly. Mobile Joomla Pro uses remote device detection, so you will always have up-to-date device database, and won't need to wait for updates anymore. This is something we've wanted to do for a long time.
Ugur: Indeed. There are also lots of other features like dedicated tablet (i.e iPad) support, and Retina/HD images.
The Mobile Joomla iPhone online device simulator
What do you think about responsive templates being "mobile-ready"?
Ugur: We love the mobile-first design philosophy, and support that. One important fact we haven't talked about much is: Mobile Joomla Pro can actually also be used with responsive templates. The problem with many responsive templates is that while the layout might align nicely to one column for small screens, it's all done on the client side - the end user still gets the full page to the mobile client, with large images, all (necessary and unnecessary) CSS and Javascript.
While more and more users have smartphones (50% in the US now), many users still don't have good dataplans and the mobile network connections are oftentimes not by far as fast in the desktop world. Couple that with the fact the download size of websites is increasing all the time, and you should notice a problem... There needs to be server-side optimization also. This is possible with Mobile Joomla Pro - you can keep using a Responsive Theme for your mobile site also, while letting Mobile Joomla engine to optimize the site content for each mobile device.
Miikka: And you can also take advantage of the easy backend device simulator preview in tweaking your site.
Thanks for the interview guys! Any last greetings to the readers?
Miikka: We have extremely interesting launch special with other great Joomla providers - please check it out on the Mobile Joomla website!
If you want to learn more about the launch of Mobile Joomla Pro, make sure to follow Mobile Joomla on Twitter and Facebook.
