XF 1.2 Responsive Design

In order to better support smaller-screen devices such as mobile phones and tablets, XenForo 1.2 will be introducing a responsive version of the default design.

What is responsive design? At the simplest level, it allows you to specify CSS that applies only if the screen width is below a certain level. This allows the design to be significantly altered to fit smaller screens. For example, tabular or horizontally-focused designs don't work well when you only have a screen that's 320px wide (an iPhone).

So, what options will XenForo provide?

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Here you can see that we provide 3 "inflection points". In general, they correspond to particular classes of devices.
  • Narrow (max width: 480px): phones vertical, some phones horizontal
  • Medium (max width: 600px): some phones horizontal, 7" tablets vertical
  • Wide (max width: 800px): 7" tablets horizontal, 10" tablets vertical
You can also disable the responsive design entirely. Specific pages can also opt out of the responsive design with a <xen:container /> line.

For add-on developers, many of your pages will automatically support the responsive design well. It really depends how much "default" CSS you are using. If you are creating multi-column layouts (such as some resource manager pages), you will need to write custom responsive versions. However, if you're just using standard systems like tabs and forms, you will automatically inherit the responsive changes.

The extent of changes on a page will really vary based on the width of a device. For example, "wide devices" (601-800px by default) will see mostly similar pages, but things like sidebars will be moved if needed.

But this is really more about screenshots. For ease of my job, I'm taking these screenshots in Chrome on a desktop machine. :) As always, this is a work in progress and things are still subject to change.

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This part does deserve special mention as it's very dynamic now. The short of it is that if there's not enough space to fit things (at any resolution), navigation/search options will be hidden as necessary and shown behind menus. User alerts/unread conversation counts will be folded into your user menu. If there is a selected navigation tab, it will always be shown as well.

These screens are all taken at the "narrow" level to show you the full extent of the possible changes.

ss-2013-05-24_11-49-35.webp ss-2013-05-24_11-50-00.webp ss-2013-05-24_11-50-46.webp ss-2013-05-24_11-51-04.webp ss-2013-05-24_11-52-22.webp ss-2013-05-24_11-53-06.webp ss-2013-05-24_11-53-36.webp
 
Responsive is cool--we have the beta installed on our testing forum and it's working smoothly. So much easier to read and edit now! I made a CSS change to the "controls" at the bottom of each post (edit, report, IP, like, reply, etc.), making them into raised "buttons" but I'm not sure if I like it. However, on a mobile device, I personally have trouble seeing if I have clicked a text link, so a "button" like this, which changes with "hover" and "active" properties, gives me a little bit of visual feedback as if they were pressed. I may even lose the raised/pressed button and just go with a background that changes color when one of those is tapped.

Also, I want to make a template edit to put the user's location underneath their user title in the most narrow layout, as I did not see an option to turn that on or off in the responsive layout.
 
This might have been answered already, but can the responsive design easily be disabled? I'd rather use it on another style, rather than my primary style.
 
Is there a way to shrink the header logo along with the screen size in the responsive style by either using a separate logo for different screen size of just having css image shrink the size the logo ?
 
Doesn't the logo resize in responsive? I was testing a responsive WordPress theme, and that theme resized my 960 px wide logo to fit my smartphone screen.

I'm really liking the responsive layout. I know, I said that already. :D But given all the issues I'm having with Tapatalk and Forum Runner, I've decided that we'll be removing those add-ons when we upgrade to 1.2 on our production forum. Other than push notifications (members can go brush up on how to read email ;) ), it is nice to have the full forum functionality, and actually have smilies that display properly for a change (!), with the "native" XF view. Even more importantly, my monetization strategies on the various forums are preserved in responsive view, whereas Tapatalk tries to get into the act if I try to monetize through them. Um, no thanks.

I do not develop or create sites much anymore (no time), but having finally seen how well responsive can work, I'm looking at redoing many of my WordPress sites to use a responsive theme also. I don't want to keep maintaining a WordPress site along with a separate theme or plug-in to give visitors a mobile view. Web technology has evolved past having alternative mobile sites or making members download "apps" to view the same content.
 
Doesn't the logo resize in responsive? I was testing a responsive WordPress theme, and that theme resized my 960 px wide logo to fit my smartphone screen.

I'm really liking the responsive layout. I know, I said that already. :D But given all the issues I'm having with Tapatalk and Forum Runner, I've decided that we'll be removing those add-ons when we upgrade to 1.2 on our production forum. Other than push notifications (members can go brush up on how to read email ;) ), it is nice to have the full forum functionality, and actually have smilies that display properly for a change (!), with the "native" XF view. Even more importantly, my monetization strategies on the various forums are preserved in responsive view, whereas Tapatalk tries to get into the act if I try to monetize through them. Um, no thanks.

I do not develop or create sites much anymore (no time), but having finally seen how well responsive can work, I'm looking at redoing many of my WordPress sites to use a responsive theme also. I don't want to keep maintaining a WordPress site along with a separate theme or plug-in to give visitors a mobile view. Web technology has evolved past having alternative mobile sites or making members download "apps" to view the same content.

I guess I should make a resource out of this :LOL:

http://xenforo.com/community/threads/responsive-questions.52925/#post-568864
 
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