Making forum skin mobile-friendly

b/Website Talk publicado por u/Dream of Omnimaga January 14, 2015, 07:09:14 AM

Making forum skin mobile-friendly

Responsive forum skin is a feature that is coming in SMF 2.1 by default, but currently we have SMF 2.0 and probably until a while after SMF 2.1 goes gold. Some people have troubles using SMF 2.0 default theme on mobile computers and the one we are using right now is heavily based on SMF default.

I don't want users to have to switch between two themes if they want to have a mobile one, and I would prefer that the site colors and style looks identical on mobile devices, as in not use some stock iOS-like theme from somewhere, so it looks like we will have to use CSS mediaqueries. We already use some, such as how the search moves out of the navigation when in low resolution, but that's not enough, and the site navigation is a major issue, and a suggestion I got is that signatures should be hidden on mobile and mini-profile moved elsewhere under a certain resolution.

So this will be the topic where the staff will discuss the changes and people can give feedback as they happen. Ideally not much work will have to be put into such theme update because we will have to redo everything from scratch when SMF 2.0 gets terminated anyway.

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u/Yuki January 14, 2015, 07:18:39 AM

You raise a good point. Our current mobile solution is Tapatalk, but that would be way better if we actually have a mobile theme. Personally I don't mind switching between 2 themes, although we could add a button to easily switch between both themes, maybe with a little browser detection thrown in. (Or else take this theme that costs $20 that does everything for you, if you have the money for it.) The default theme for 2.1 (currently in Beta 1) will be responsive, so we'll obviously install a test copy as soon as possible (as DJ said, probably around RC2 or when it gets stable enough) and modify the theme with our colors so we'll be ready when the final 2.1.0 version comes out.

u/Snektron January 14, 2015, 08:06:38 AM

Im on mobile right now and
i dont have any compliants though.

u/Duke "Tape" Eiyeron January 14, 2015, 09:34:23 AM

Me neither, except when I'm having troubles with the touchscreen keyboard or when FX is heavily derping. Your theme has big enough buttons for someone to press on it and I don't have troubles browsing (welp, I'm on a 5" FHD phone, so...)

And no, I don't want to have an application I don't know for browsing CW. If you really need a mobile verison, I could help providing some nice responsive bases.

u/Snektron January 14, 2015, 02:49:13 PM

Quote from: Eiyeron on January 14, 2015, 09:34:23 AM
And no, I don't want to have an application I don't know for browsing CW.

I second this.

u/CKH4 January 14, 2015, 03:04:25 PM

I have a little trouble sometimes but it's not too big of a deal. I'd like a mobile version as long as it didn't remove features.

u/aetios January 14, 2015, 03:05:41 PM

Do we even have a real mobile theme right now? If I access CW on my phone I get the desktop version.

u/CKH4 January 14, 2015, 03:11:18 PM

No (I think), but your browser should make text bigger so that you don't have to zoom in bunches.

u/Dream of Omnimaga January 14, 2015, 04:30:34 PM

Quote from: aeTIos on January 14, 2015, 03:05:41 PM
Do we even have a real mobile theme right now? If I access CW on my phone I get the desktop version.

Nah we don't have one. We got Tapatalk, but the new version, from what I saw in Streetwalrus screenshots, is garbage, and the only other alternative is text-only and was for very old mobile phones.

The goal right now is to make the current theme so that at low resolution it looks different, but still the same color scheme and stuff.

And the automatic text zooming in mobile browsers is a major issue with the theme right now because it forced me to merge the banner slogan into the image, so that it always remained the same size as the banner. >.<

u/rallat May 08, 2015, 12:15:30 PM

How do you handle the with Mobile-Fiendly algoo from Google here on the forum. Do you have a significant drop of organic traffic?

u/Yuki May 08, 2015, 12:36:31 PM

SMF released a mod that makes it Google-friendly, but it unfortunately conflicts with the other mods. Gotta check for a solution, for the time being.

u/novenary May 08, 2015, 12:54:52 PM

A few improvements that could be made : some of the layout edits get in the way when browsing on mobile. For example the navbar looks like this in Firefox when you zoom :

Other things could be done to improve the site but it's one of the biggest issues. I don't like floating navbars personally. It's a waste of screen space.

u/Snektron May 08, 2015, 01:22:11 PM

Looks the same on chrome , but it should be an easily editable aspect, right?

u/CKH4 May 08, 2015, 01:34:28 PM

This is what it looks like for me on chrome:

u/novenary May 08, 2015, 01:35:33 PM

Originally it was like on Omni, in the header. DJ made this edit inspired by facebook, tiplanet and others. I personally think it's bad design. I've been experimenting a bit, responsive design should be feasible with the current theme with only css edits (aka the right way).