While at OSCON last month, I couldn't help but notice a lot of chatter between the booths about mobile devices, mobile browsing, and much adeu about how mobile was everywhere I would ever want to be, ever. So, this week I gave in, sipped on a little post-OSCON Kool-aid, and decided to find out what Liferay could do when it came to unlocking the power of my iPhone.

As smartphones continue to blend (or some might say impede) the space between dialing a number, taking a picture, or discovering new music, mobile browsers now offer us the next frontier in the previously desktop-exclusive market of web design. I don't count WAP either. We've come a long way from WAP and, man, I'm glad that never really took off. The world wide web doesn't need to support another IE6.

Well, now I would like to introduce to you three new iPhone themes freely available in our plugin repository; they are Jedi Mobile, iPhone, and iPhone Redirect.

The Jedi Mobile theme takes the original Jedi theme and packs it into a bite-sized, smartphone punch. What you end up getting is something akin to my favorite mobile experiences at Facebook or Flickr, but with a moodier palette, oh, and the power to control the entire portal at your fingertips.

The iPhone theme takes a much more direct approach to “web application”. With its indigenous appearance and feel, your website starts to feel like a playlist, your user experience appears native, and navigation comes naturally.

The iPhone theme also introduces a new browser detection mechanism for specialized mobile functionality. If you visit the site on an iPhone, you get the bare minimal javascript, html, and css. If you visit the site on a regular machine, you get all the more advanced UI features which will be quite necessary when administering the page; adding and moving portlets, and creating web content.

The iPhone Redirect theme takes the browser detection mechanism one step further; intelligent redirection. iPhone Redirect is an unstyled theme which comes with a custom initialization feature that can detect an iPhone browser visiting the page, check for a Mobile community, and, if found, automatically redirect the iPhone user to that community. And yes, it will work with a Virtual Host (eg: m.liferay.com) or a Friendly URL (eg: localhost/web/mobile).

Pretty neat, huh? I thought so too; and this is only the first step.