(EDITOR'S NOTE: This is an article in progress - please check back for updates)

Modern, mobile, social. It's a theme for RavenNuke™ 3.0. The mobile part is especially interesting. Spasticdonkey and others have been looking into mobile theme support, which raised my question: what is the best way to detect mobile devices?  A little research yielded several options that fall into 2 categories: locally installed scripts that parse the browser's HTTP Header (mainly the User-Agent) and cloud / hosted services with a device description repository (DDR) - a database of device information - which can usually be installed locally for a higher price.

Which approach is right for your site? That depends on a number of factors:

• What / how much device information you need
• Cost
• Performance

Let's look at the DDR services, including Scientiamobile's WURFL, Device Atlas, Handset Detection, and OpenDDR, and the popular PHP mobile detection scripts, including MobileESP, Detect Mobile Browsers, and Mobile Detect.