[Debate] Responsive Templates vs Mobile Skins

What is better for *YOUR* forum ?

  • Total voters
    57
Impressed how Xenforo.com now displays really well on small displays.

upload_2013-10-23_10-57-27.webp

When it gets wider it shows more

upload_2013-10-23_10-58-3.webp

At a certain width it shows the "Latest" column.

upload_2013-10-23_10-58-30.webp

and the dropdown menu thingy
upload_2013-10-23_10-59-10.webp
goes away when it is able to.

upload_2013-10-23_10-59-47.webp

Great stuff.
 
Arty said:
Document size: that's biggest disadvantage of responsive design. Server sends same document as for desktop browser, so document might be quite large. It also affects loading time if your internet connection is slow.
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This is the major issue I have with responsive. I'm thinking that the best way to handle this is to create a very light mobile skin that sorta "looks" like the site when it's Responsive mobile view for phones. Not sure if it should be the same for tablets.
 
Why is it a major issue?

The XenForo forum home is about 500KB and most of that is static resources that are fetched once, cached and then stored locally. So in reality, I don't see at all why it would be an issue.
 
Chris Deeming said:
Why is it a major issue?

The XenForo forum home is about 500KB and most of that is static resources that are fetched once, cached and then stored locally. So in reality, I don't see at all why it would be an issue.
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"It affects loading time if your internet connection is slow."

^^^That's the major issue. You think 500kb is small but wait till your browsing the internet from your phone with an area that has slow data. That's what @Russ mobile theme was perfect for.
 
Yet Russ's mobile theme quite possibly still loaded a lot of the static content that bumps the overall size up. Such as xenforo.js and jquery. Would need to be tested. A mobile theme no don't us lower in size but I'm just not convinced the difference is that high.
 
Chris Deeming said:
Yet Russ's mobile theme quite possibly still loaded a lot of the static content that bumps the overall size up. Such as xenforo.js and jquery. Would need to be tested. A mobile theme no don't us lower in size but I'm just not convinced the difference is that high.
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While in threads, the pages loaded really fast. That's all I gotta say about that.
 
I think Responsive is the wave of the future. Phones are getting to have very fast internet now. The best LTE/4G can rival shoddy wired broadband. With a combination of smart CSS and javascript lazy-loading, a single design can work well on a PC, tablet, or mobile phone.

It does depend on the relevance of the content. Some sites present a lot of information that is not necessarily important or relevant on a mobile device, or should be displayed in an entirely different way.

But for forums and news sites, I think the days of "mobile skins" are probably over.
 
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I've had more requests in the past couple weeks to update that old mobile style but I have no plans too. I will say this when I did remove some of the jquery, the site was ridiculously fast, broken... but fast haha :D
 
I like the idea responsive design but not on smart phones, for iPads, Android pads on wifi, this idea is damn good, but on smartphone, it is a totally different story, the cpu, battery, screen size, cell data speed of a smart phone are usually not as powerful as the desktop computers or pads, loading the same content which is mainly designed for a desktop computer only means kills your battery very quick and runs much slower.
 
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