MyBB Community Forums

Hello developer whom I greatly respect,

I hope you'll excuse me for perhaps making a post that has been posted before. I do so because I think I can help.

I'll start with a short introduction, since this is my first post: My name is norbert, I'm a 28 year old front-end webdeveloper. I've been a developer in this branch for 6 years now. I've done a fair share of PHP and MySQL too.
I'm using MyBB for a community site I'm hosting and I see a lot of room for improvement on the front-end of MyBB.

I've seen some jokingly talk about HTML5 on this board, and I think there's some misconceptions about the subject. I'd like to tell you my experience about it:
HTML5 is here, it's here now, it works well and it's a great platform to develop for/on/with. HTML5 consists of a lot of seperate modules. They do not ALL have to be supported in order for webdevelopers to start using the others/some. Some modules like CSS3 are even groups of sub-modules some of which are well supported, some only on cutting edge-browsers. This does not mean you cannot use them at all. You can use them, to improve the experience of users.

I'd like to advocate Graceful Degration or Progressive Enchancement.
In short: It's OK for a website to look or behave differently in older browsers or edge-case situations. It's perfectly normal for a website to be a bit basic in IE6, no animations, no modal windows etc. And be very sleek in Chrome 11 with fancy roll-over animations, ajax, custom fonts etc..
As long as the core features of the website are available: navigation and content.
Anyone who thinks if fine to expect the same performance/experience from a 10 year old browser compared to one release today, just doesn't 'get it'. Old browser just don't have the capabilities as the newer ones do. Seen this chart?: <chart> IE7 didn't fit on it. Browsers are changing at incredible rate. By making layouts/software like we're still partying in 1999 all that potential is untapped.
Also perhaps it's worth taking a look at your current userbase. How many of your users need IE6, IE7 support? For how many of those people would a basic experience be just fine?

Waiting for the HTML5 spec to be fully supported in every browser is a mistake. You might also want to start using HTML5 now for the reason that mobile is about to explode and mobiles with their lower specs and low bandwith, require optimized front-end programming. Also it's a different 'platform', with different requirements and completely different use-cases.
Don't make the mistake of making 2 separate template with separate functionality for desktop and mobile. First problem with that: there's not 1 type of mobile. Mobile devices come with a variety of features, screen-sizes, touch/no-touch etc. The term mobile is not a group of devices, it's a group use-cases "on the go". Second problem is: you simply do not know what devices might come out in the future, with what resolution, what capabilities. You should not build templates specifically for iPhone of iPad, simply because they are considered 'the mobile device' right now. You should think about the the possible use-cases per resolution and design templates for that..

The only real answer to the mobile trend is responsive design:
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/respo...eb-design/
example: http://mattkersley.com/responsive/

I'm suggesting you use a modern forward looking HTML and CSS and JavaScript approach.
Some fantastic frameworks have already been build by amazing front-end developer such as:
HTML5 boilerplate
Bootstrap
Object Oriented CSS

Bootstrap and oocss both have a great grid layout system that you use to make reliable layout without tables. They work perfectly fine in older browser too.

Making modern websites isn't walhalla, and it does require a fair chunk of understanding front-end structures to setup. But when setup properly it's less error prone then table-layouts, it's faster and allows for amazing flexibility.


To conclude:
HTML5 is ready now
Templates should be flexible and responsive

HTML5 has little to do with html templates being responsive. Most of it's semantic and trying to rely less on third parting things like Flash and Javascript for common tasks in the modern day.

I doubt they'll use a framework because it's so much useless bulk that comes along with it normally.

MyBB 2.0 is definitely going to have a whole new system for templating (namely Twig as far as has been announced up till now). As for HTML5, we've already had a major public discussion on the subject. many users were for it and in the end it all comes down to Justin. He said that he'd decide nearer the time about whether to utilise it or not.

As for the theme being responsive etc., that's also up to Justin. In the end though, theme developers will have all the freedom that they have now with the 1.6 branch to customise styles to look jjust as they want.

(2012-04-03, 02:18 PM)euantor Wrote: [ -> ]MyBB 2.0 is definitely going to have a whole new system for templating (namely Twig as far as has been announced up till now). As for HTML5, we've already had a major public discussion on the subject. many users were for it and in the end it all comes down to Justin. He said that he'd decide nearer the time about whether to utilise it or not.

As for the theme being responsive etc., that's also up to Justin. In the end though, theme developers will have all the freedom that they have now with the 1.6 branch to customise styles to look jjust as they want.

The system for making templates will change, so it might be a good time to change the default template too. Which is what I was asking for: A modern minded default template.
I understand users can edit templates, basicly rewriting every little bit of HTML and making it as modern as they want.

That is a truckload of work!
I'm offering my help so users won't have to do just that.
I'm really new here, how would I best contact Justin to see where I would be of assistance?
That is, if my help is needed/welcome.

(2012-04-03, 03:28 PM)Norbert Wrote: [ -> ]

(2012-04-03, 02:18 PM)euantor Wrote: [ -> ]MyBB 2.0 is definitely going to have a whole new system for templating (namely Twig as far as has been announced up till now). As for HTML5, we've already had a major public discussion on the subject. many users were for it and in the end it all comes down to Justin. He said that he'd decide nearer the time about whether to utilise it or not.

As for the theme being responsive etc., that's also up to Justin. In the end though, theme developers will have all the freedom that they have now with the 1.6 branch to customise styles to look jjust as they want.

The system for making templates will change, so it might be a good time to change the default template too. Which is what I was asking for: A modern minded default template.
I understand users can edit templates, basicly rewriting every little bit of HTML and making it as modern as they want.

That is a truckload of work!
I'm offering my help so users won't have to do just that.
I'm really new here, how would I best contact Justin to see where I would be of assistance?
That is, if my help is needed/welcome.

2.0 is to have a whole new theme and, of course, corresponding set of templates. I do agree it's a lot of work, though it is theoretically possible to create a modern theme using 1.6 - take a look at xekko.co.uk for an example.

As for contacting Justin, you could try PMing him, though I don't think much work has been done on 2.0 yet (he's likely been focused on 1.8 seeing as it was recently announced to feature a new theme based on one of his existing ones). I also don't know how much information he'll be free to disclose. If you're really interested in helping and contributing, it may well be a good idea to try and apply to actually join the core team. You can do so here: http://www.mybb.com/about/apply

I couldn't agree more with everything Norbert has said here. I hope he's able to get involved in the development of 2.0

Yes, being mobile ready is really important, and Norbert made other great points too.

A significant portion of the 2.0 interface has been built out already in a number of theme prototypes. They do not make use of HTML5.

That said, I already plan on rebuilding a lot of the interface (at least from a coding standpoint) when active development begins. At that time, I'll make a decision on where we will stand with HTML5.

Everything Norbert has said I agree on.

The template system for MyBB is terrible. If you guys can see, 90% of the themes people make suck. Most of the themes layouts are the same. The link that euantor gave out looks great. But I bet it was a pain in the lime for the developer.

When you guys do change it, I really hope it's not the same. Using an XML file for styles and mark-up for themes sucks. How about dropping themes it's own style-sheets, js, and others in it's own theme folder?Similar to what WordPress does.

If you guys also don't take mobile and responsive design seriously, MyBB will never get any more popularity than what is has now. Mobile is booming, including Responsive Design and User Experience. I had over 150 clients this past year. What was the one of the biggest request? 80% wanted mobile integration and UX. If you guys want big corporations and companies to use MyBB, mobile is very important. (btw, mobile integration is as easy as using CSS3 media queries)

An example of what you guys can do is include a default style-sheet for smaller screen sizes using CSS3 media queries. Remove and resize elements so the content is more visible and the UI is more usable. Even though old browsers don't support it, the new updated ones are, the ipads/iphones/androids do.

I know the back-end of the software is important, but the front-end and design is also. Specially for theme and plugin devs.

(2012-04-20, 01:10 PM)kdevs Wrote: [ -> ]The link that euantor gave out looks great. But I bet it was a pain in the lime for the developer.

It wasn't a PITA. I really enjoyed doing it.