Making responsive sites is the new trend in the theming world. Responsive sites (also called mobile web apps) flexibly adapt themself to the resolution of the current device.
Mobile web apps will have a distinct advantage over native apps because they are:
- Cheaper and easier to maintain
- Decrease time to market
- Cross-platform compatible
For very small small Drupal sites, generating a theme using Artisteer might be is a good-enough solution. But large companies need their own structue and special identity.
Until recently, the Drupal's Omega base theme was my most recommended solution for responsive Drupal theming.
Omega, hands down, claimed the theme framework crown for in 2012. (Mark Carver)
But nowdays, a good Drupal base theme should be:
- Responsive (to automatically adapt to the resolution of the device).
- Mobile-first.
- Lightweight.
- Based on a CSS macro language, to be easily customize (CSS preprocessors like SCSS, SASS and LESS are on the rise).
- Allows to CSS macro language to be easily compiled, with no special server setup.
- Allows to trigger dynamic behaviors by simply adding CSS clasees to DOM elements.
Meet the new Kind, bootstrap, which cleverly fits this gap:
- Bootstrap's CSS macro language, LESS, is compiled with Javascript - no special server setup is needed.
- Bootstrap's amazing built-in plugins allow to trigger behaviro (e.g. modal windows) by simply adding CSS classes (no coding required).
Amnon