eZ Publish Mobile Solutions

Two weeks ago, I had the opportunity to watch a demonstration of eZ Publish's mobile solutions for the content management system (CMS) space. The goal of the demo was to show off how eZ Systems has integrated mobile functionality into their eZ Publish CMS.

The first two solutions were a strong indication that mobile browsing has reached critical mass. eZ showed us that default templates are designed to make eZ Publish web sites accessible by smart phone browsers without additional development work, making a web site immediately mobile accessible. The web site automatically goes from a multiple column to a single column view. Of course, it's important to keep in mind that if those default templates are to be useful, there's a very specific way they have to be used, and pages will have the same look and feel across multiple web sites. Still, it's a great start, and even minimal custom development work should make some great leaps in uniqueness and usability of the design.

The second solution was interfacing with the administrative functions using a mobile browser. This includes everything from making a post (which isn't new in social media) to creating new pages. Unfortunately, since mobile browsers still have problems with advanced JavaScript and AJAX, and download and rendering times can try even the patience of a saint, the administrative interface is much more simplistic. It is, by necessity, a stripped down version of the full eZ admin interface. Markup will be the biggest challenge; writers are used to having WYSIWYG options nowadays. From a change management perspective, companies will need to make sure their writers and editors are well trained and know to expect to have to do their own markup, otherwise adoption rates will be depressingly low in any but the most tech-savvy of user groups.

The most exciting thing about the mobile solutions that eZ Publish now provides is the iPhone/iPad application toolkit. Using the toolkit and associated APIs, companies can now build iPhone apps that use their eZ Publish instance. An audience can access web site content in a completely different manner. While iPhone apps are not exactly trivial to develop, this allows more seamless integration between PC and mobile-based methods of content retrieval. Companies can use a single eZ Publish database as the authoritative source of content, and writers can use the eZ Publish admin interface to populate content for multiple channels, whether it be the web site, an iPhone app, or PDFs.

What I love about this is that thinking outside the box will result in some slick interfaces and creative functionality that will help end-users realize they don't have to stick to traditional methods of interacting with web sites. And, really, it just goes to show that a CMS can be a web CMS, but in the end, it's really about the content, and how we interface with that content is really up to us. eZ Publish's mobile solutions offer an array of intriguing possibilities.