A Server-Side Feature Detection System for an Enterprise Web CMS

Abstract

Mobile devices have in later years become increasingly popular to use for browsing the Web. With this increased popularity, the limitations of the devices, along with the complexity of modern Web pages, have become apparent. Several methods have been introduced to alleviate the issues encountered on the “Mobile Web”, including Responsive Web Design (RWD) and Device Experiences (DE). In this thesis, I present the Web technologies and concepts involved historically, along with their perceived problems today. Furthermore, I present an implementation of a system utilizing a third concept for improving performance on the Web: Responsive Web Design + Server Side Components (RESS), implemented as a server-side feature detection plugin for a Content Management System (CMS) named Enonic. This plugin strives to improve the CMS’s future friendliness, as well as looking into the viability of RESS as a concept for improving “Mobile Web” performance. My results demonstrate that the plugin may provide a more flexible and future friendly method for creating Web sites that are responsive not just on the client side, but also on the server side. The results also show that the plugin achieves this without imposing a significant latency increase in HTTP requests made to the CMS.

The code for the implementation can be accessed from my GitHub repository at: https://github.com/helleroy/enonicDetector