To follow up on this, I actually made some additional changes to how "useformat" works to simplify manually switching between mobile and desktop views which had been suggested by Brion Vibber. Take a look at: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/MediaWiki/113865
This removes the "Permanently disable mobile view" text (broken for anyone other than the WMF anyway) and makes it so accessing the site with "useformat=mobile" in the URL (eg by clicking 'Mobile view' at the bottom of any page on a site with MobileFrontend enabled) will set a cookie which will ensure that you see the mobile view until either the cookie expires or you explicitly switch back to desktop view.
Similarly, this removes the link "view this page on regular {{sitename}}" and replaces it with "Desktop view". Clicking on it, regardless of your device, will set a cookie which will ensure that you only see the desktop view until the cookie expires or you explicitly switch back to the mobile view.
Testing and feedback appreciated!
On Mon, Mar 12, 2012 at 2:45 PM, Arthur Richards arichards@wikimedia.orgwrote:
Over the last couple of weeks, I've taken a few steps to remove some of the WMF-specific bits of the MobileFrontend code base: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34144 https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34145
Also, now if you view an article with "useformat=mobile" in the URL's query string, MobileFrontend will keep the mobile view enabled as you browse page to page until you explicitly exit the mobile view.
While MobileFrontend has now been generalized enough to be used beyond the WMF cluster, there are still quit a few things that could be done to improve the ease of out-of-the-box usage. For instance, adding configurable WURFL support (which I believe should be fairly straightforward - this is out of date but the same idea should still work: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2012-January/057478.html) or making it possible to use path-based modifiers to signify mobile view (eg http://mywiki.com/wiki/Article -> http://mywiki.com/wiki/m/Article - https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=35178).
It would be great if anyone can help test/provide feedback for the changes that have been made, and especially if anyone wants to help add the features mentioned above!
-- Arthur Richards Software Engineer, Mobile [[User:Awjrichards]] IRC: awjr +1-415-839-6885 x6687