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Date: 2014-10-09 05:34 pm (UTC)But I believe you're substantially incorrect about DW and mobile, especially the motivations you project on the dev team, because you start from an incorrect premise.
I regularly use DW on a mobile device, and DW is far and away the most useable and most attractive such site on my device. When I say "useable" I don't just mean "easy to figure out", I mean "the navigational controls all actually work" (which is not the case for e.g. LJ.)
But my mobile device is not one of the dominant mobile devices, and therein lies one of the real issues: it's not mobile vs. desktop. It's ioS+Android mobile vs. all the other kinds of mobile.
Doing some sort of slick ioS+Android AJAXy interface for DW is totally doable[*], without sacrificing the more democratically accessible (that is, to a much wider range of devices) interface -- but it takes developer time and probably money that I don't think DW is swimming in.
[* In fact, the very templating/skinning theme feature you mention enjoying being able to customize brings the possibility of more AJAXy themes as options for thems that want them more into reach.]
This is a social justice issue in the domain of socioeconomic status: slick AJAXy interfaces work on the more expensive mobile devices. They fail entirely -- and lock users out of using a site at all -- on cheap phones.
If you want to check this out for the US market, you can try the following -- I don't know if it'll show right for a UK user, but if you want to try... Go to tracfone.com. It's one of the most ubiquitous pre-paid phone companies, favored by those looking for cheap phones. Find the link "Shop Phones". Use the US zipcode 02128, which is the impoverished area I work in (East Boston).
Right now, the cheapest Android phone they have is $80. Every other phone on that page that says "Mobile Web" but doesn't mention being Android? You can assume that if it doesn't advertise being Android, it's the manufacturer's in-house OS and browser. And you can reliably assume that it works terribly, if at all, with AJAXy web sites.
Their browsers are typically older, and the capacity to do on-screen partial redraw, which is what AJAX relies on, didn't use to be universal. I also have a hunch that it's processor intensive in a way that the cheaper phones can't support. That's part of what makes them cheaper: less powerful and/or simply less hardware.
And something that is frustrating to me is that most people buying low end phones have no clue about Android vs. not-Android, and don't realize that the price of buying lowest end means you're going to get locked out of a lot of the web. How would they learn this? The way I learn these things is... via the web. Catch-22.
But I disgress.
I assure you, mobile is all the rage in web development in the US right now, but there are serious class issues around it. Developers and their white-collar pals sit at desktops, so the demand from them for mobile accessibility (of any kind) isn't what it is from the rest of the population, who would like to primarily use their handhelds to internet; fortunately, their bosses have smelled the money, and aimed them in the direction of supporting mobile, but, of course, the mobile their bosses are most interested in supporting is that which is possessed by those with the most money.