MyBB Community Forums

Just like 1.4 - 1.6, you may need to take some time to look at what changes are made to each template. Many are changed for the theme but some will introduce new features.

For the plug ins, would there be much change to those for this? Or is it just going to be changing compatibility here and there?

Other than that, this looks nice, I like the new added features.

(2013-01-24, 08:15 PM)DissociationFJ Wrote: [ -> ]For the plug ins, would there be much change to those for this? Or is it just going to be changing compatibility here and there?

Probably not, at least not yet. AFAICT 1.6 plugins are working fine on 1.8.

How much has the template structure changed? Is the .tborder container it's own template now or am I still going to have to hunt down and change every instance if it?

Were it up to me I'd have

<table class="tborder" ...>
<thead>
{$head}
</thead>
<tbody>
{$content}
</tbody>
<tfoot>
{$foot}
</tfoot>
</table>

as it's own template, then the various bits are their own use-specific templates. Sure it'd be more templates to edit for each individual thing, but the majority of the boxes can be updated with a single edit. Then someone that wants to get rid of the pointless tables can do so much more easily (there are plenty of tables in use currently that can easily be replaced by a couple of nested divs).

Just installed it, I'm going to check it out now.

With the theme change in 1.8, does that suggest that 2.0 wont be here for quite a few years ?

(2013-01-24, 10:42 PM)Frank.Barry Wrote: [ -> ]With the theme change in 1.8, does that suggest that 2.0 wont be here for quite a few years ?

2.0 is far from being released. Once 1.8 is out and things have settled down, then work on 2.0 will speed up. There's no rush, 1.8 is something we're making to last.

(2013-01-24, 08:13 PM)Fábio Maia Wrote: [ -> ]

(2013-01-24, 06:23 PM)brad-t Wrote: [ -> ]Try implementing that and let me know how it goes. Responsive design is great but it can't accomplish everything. For a forum, the entire interface needs to be reconsidered for a smaller screen. Using MyBB GM with a dedicated mobile theme is a better solution.

What exactly can't responsive design accomplish that you require?

I'll confess that I'm not an expert on the subject, but from what I do understand it seems to me that responsive design is ideal for changing the styling and basic layout of items depending on screen size, e.g. moving side columns to the top and bottom, getting rid of gradients, adjusting element sizes ... things like that.

However, forums have a really complex UI. There are some things you might want to totally omit from your mobile interface (e.g. since my mobile interface doesn't display signatures, the signature editor has been removed – basic example), or you could wish to rearrange or renvision certain elements in their entirety. You could probably do a lot of this by controlling div display/visibility but honestly, it seems easier and more elegant to just use two separate themes.

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(2013-01-24, 10:42 PM)Frank.Barry Wrote: [ -> ]With the theme change in 1.8, does that suggest that 2.0 wont be here for quite a few years ?

They've been saying that forever, so I'm not sure why you think the situation would be different now.

(2013-01-24, 11:05 PM)brad-t Wrote: [ -> ]

(2013-01-24, 08:13 PM)Fábio Maia Wrote: [ -> ]

(2013-01-24, 06:23 PM)brad-t Wrote: [ -> ]Try implementing that and let me know how it goes. Responsive design is great but it can't accomplish everything. For a forum, the entire interface needs to be reconsidered for a smaller screen. Using MyBB GM with a dedicated mobile theme is a better solution.

What exactly can't responsive design accomplish that you require?

I'll confess that I'm not an expert on the subject, but from what I do understand it seems to me that responsive design is ideal for changing the styling and basic layout of items depending on screen size, e.g. moving side columns to the top and bottom, getting rid of gradients, adjusting element sizes ... things like that.

However, forums have a really complex UI. There are some things you might want to totally omit from your mobile interface (e.g. since my mobile interface doesn't display signatures, the signature editor has been removed – basic example), or you could wish to rearrange or renvision certain elements in their entirety. You could probably do a lot of this by controlling div display/visibility but honestly, it seems easier and more elegant to just use two separate themes.

What responsive design has over two separate themes is that you can design for ALL resolutions in just one theme. Which means you can make the design as efficient as possible on tablets, phones, netbooks, laptops, widescreen, etc, rather than having 5 themes.

And a lot is possible with responsive design, the only thing that isn't (Without using Javascript and breaking compatibility with some things [old IE, users not running JS, etc]) is changing colspan="" in tables. This is what makes MyBB just about the hardest thing in the world to do a responsive design for.

Btw you can use a plugin with a responsive design to hide certain things, same as a dedicated mobile theme.

(2013-01-24, 11:05 PM)brad-t Wrote: [ -> ]I'll confess that I'm not an expert on the subject, but from what I do understand it seems to me that responsive design is ideal for changing the styling and basic layout of items depending on screen size, e.g. moving side columns to the top and bottom, getting rid of gradients, adjusting element sizes ... things like that.

It's not impossible to dramatically change your layout based on the viewport (as if it were a completely different website). Check out mediaqueri.es for some great stuff. But why would you? If you engineer your basic layout really well, it can easily be adapted and extended to the user's needs. It's all about architecture really. We will hopefully be putting a lot of thought into it for 2.0. As for 1.8, it's probably not going to happen. The codebase is messy and outdated, we should probably just leave it alone. Anyway, that is not quite the philosophy of responsive web design. It goes far beyond getting rid of elements and stuff. See below.

Quote:However, forums have a really complex UI. There are some things you might want to totally omit from your mobile interface (...)

That's not how you do proper responsive web design. You're assuming the desktop version of the website is the "original", which ideally it shouldn't be. At the end of the day the basic purpose of a website is to deliver information, which means if your content is hard to obtain because of design issues then you have failed to deliver said information. Therefore in order to deliver your content as widely as possible you should start off with a stripped down barebones version of your website that is accessible from any device and add extra stuff to the page as the viewport increases. Mobile first is what you should be looking at. That's the difference between graceful degradation and progressive enhancement.

There are some issues with responsive web design, but they are technical, mainly to do with downloading unnecessary assets (e.g. images and stylesheets). You can easily scale down images proportionally with CSS, but why would mobile users download such large images only to have them downscaled afterwards? Similarly, why would mobile users download the bits of CSS they are not going to need? This is some of the stuff that is actively being discussed and worked on. If I recall correctly there are plans for a <picture> element, for which you can specify multiple image sources or something like that.