it's really not that hard to roll your sleeves up and dig into the css... i have a premium theme that i altered to such a degree the owner allowed me to take credit, and the mobile function is simply tagged onto the end of the main css- a matter of fact, ALL css is combined, minified, and pushed via h2 to clients.
dont' get me wrong, it's not perfect yet. but it's close. check out link in my sig for example. you can minimize your desktop for the same effects of mobile. there is a problem i have with it slightly escaping the screen size, but a double tap on the screen and it aligns.... i may fix that this morning now that i think about it.
Sorry, but that is very far from perfect. It may only be "not that hard" to make your forum minimally usable in mobile.
Quote from: Gwenwyfar on December 11, 2018, 10:16:33 AM
Sorry, but that is very far from perfect. It may only be "not that hard" to make your forum minimally usable in mobile.
well, that's less abrasive than your original post. i notice i only take fire from the little 'inner club' here, which i'm certain limits SMF's mobility (no pun intended).
the site works very well, though it has been stripped of some function in effort to gain speed. the mobile version was guided by users, who are happy with it.
i'm sure you can do better, and i'm sure you're willing to charge for that service too... which is what this, as many other things on this site, boil down to.
Because you keep trying to push the idea that "anyone can easily make their site responsive" while calling it great. Both of those things are wrong.
Nothing wrong with trying to make your forum more usable for mobile, specially when many themes are not, or are full of problems of their own, but you shouldn't make it sound like something it is not.
Since we're talking about "the inner club", for the record, I'm mostly only abrasive to people who waltz in and declare everything is easy (when it isn't) and when they end up using topics that are often tangentially related at best to show off how awesome they are, especially when whatever they are talking about really doesn't help the OP...
Are there good responsive SMF themes? Yes. They're not in the bounds of achievability for most SMF admins, not even the ones willing to get dirty with code, because most admins do not have the time or skill to achieve. The situation will improve once 2.1 goes live and people start adopting that as a base as it is on some level responsive, but I'm sure some will argue it isn't responsive enough.
and what is it pray tell?
something the great oracles only know? something that is mysterious and vague to everyone but those who seek profit? something that, unless presented with a signature by one 'in the club' is disturbingly yet not explained but with 'broken'?
there IS a wrong here, and it is this little club within SMF, which again I am certain limits the reach of an otherwise fine product. and which makes the enterprise of this 'responsive' dynamic within the SMF ranks tantamount to that of 'climate change', which is to say it's a load of crap being extorted for profit and obviously guarded by those who wish to corner that profit as their own.
stop flattering yourself. it isn't that hard. that said, instead of pointing out the serious issues you exemplify along with several others here, i should instead focus effort on improving what is mine instead of feeding you people what everyone here should be feeding you- a dose of your own medicine.
... and i figured you'd be around, Arantor, before too long... i don't have a clue what your issue is with people- of which i'm certainly a part- you mutter this drivel about "declaring something is easy" as it detracts from your ego to suggest that. this is obvious after reading only a handful of your interactions with people.
guess what? there is no cause for that! there is zero reason to be nasty with people. but that's what you do. every once in a while you aren't- and even when you are (as is most often) there is STILL a LOT to be learned by your offerings. i appreciate that and i'm sure others do- no, i'm CERTAIN others do.
yesterday i installed a roots supercharger on a SBC... can you do that? I can. whoopie. If someone was to ask i'd tell them "it's not that hard" and it isn't. it starts with building blocks of knowledge/information and expounds. just like coding does. i really wish i was as good at coding as you are- and i intend to be in time. in the mean time, i'll share what little i DO know as 'it isn't that hard' because, well, it isn't that hard. going from where i'm at you where you're at in a few moments? it's not hard it's impossible.... but staging those blocks will get me (and others who are on their own journey) there before you know it- and.... looking back what will be said? "It isn't that hard".
Hey, you're the one saying things are easy, we're just pointing out that things aren't like that in reality, even for those of us who've been doing this close to 20 years and do it as a day job and speak at conferences in their field...
Thing is, hard is relative. I've spent years telling people things were easy - because to me they were easy - only to discover that people around me are baffled by how easy it seems to me. I literally work with people who declare me a magician because I can do things they simply don't understand. And these are people who are senior developers with years of experience.
So my barometer for how easy something is is severely broken and in my experience it has long been the case that if I think something is easy, it almost certainly isn't. If I think something in the web design field is hard, it's almost certainly out of bounds for most users, especially since a decade of SMF taught me that most users have no idea about technical things at all.
As for why I'm so bitter around people, maybe it's because I've been around smug know it alls for too long who assert that they are correct and I learned it from them.
making a theme responsive is **NOT** easy.
If you think it is, then you have a significant amount of knowledge that most admins lack - which MAY make it "easy" for you... but even that, I doubt.
I have a site which I used Studio-003 on as a baseline moderately responsive theme... I then proceeded to tweak it for MONTHS before it was ready for production use. (and I am fairly knowledgeable in HTML and CSS)
As for your accusations -- you do realize that there is no profit involved for anyone who you would suggest is in "the inner circle"? That kinda throws your entire argument under the bus.
to the OP. Yes, there are some good and some decent responsive themes.
Unfortunately, since the core product is not a block-based design, it can take some knowledge in order to customize the theme(s) so that your site is more unique.
it 'does' take a certain type of mind to wrap around some things... there are folks who know a little about a lot, and some that know a lot about a little.
i think it was the late great Stephen Hawking who lamented that science, in the beginning, was one discipline... only to fragment as greater knowledge was gained- geologists, biology, chemistry, ect... then at a certain point in time not yet to happen, all 'scientists' will have to have a working knowledge of other disciplines and how they relate to their own... bringing 'science' back full circle where people will be 'scientists' instead of "just" biologist...
^that dynamic is present in coding, by my observation. except it's accelerated as to know SQL is great, but not if you don't know how to present it... php is great, for collecting data needed, but not if you don't have structured data source or a means to present it. folks like you have a grasp on 'all' of it... and it's because your mind is wired differently than most- not better, not worse, just differently.
i've been around SMF a lot longer than you folks realize i'm guessing. my post count doesn't account for that. this isn't my day job- so i glean what i can to make it easier from folks far more knowledgeable..... basics of css is the simplest of the specific skillsets required, and perhaps the most powerful for people, like me, who left the heavy lifting to the SMF team for functionality. CSS isn't hard. a person could get themselves spun up on CSS in a matter of a couple weeks i'm certain.
php, asp, ect- not so much... your brain has to function in a certain path to be truly proficient it's been my observation...
old tale: "the wife asks her husband to stop by the grocer and get a gallon of milk, and if they have banana's, get six"... the husband came home with six gallons of milk.. why? because he's a coder. my wife knows better than to ask me such things, as i never make it past the beer aisle.
but this is my point: this place is supposed to help and encourage people to do it themselves- offer tools and assistance in the same spirit of cooperation open source was conceived with in the first place. it's my observation many here, and in the 'inner club' are extremely egotistical. it's not a good mix.
you assume we CARE "how long you've been around"
you also assume (incorrectly, again) that because YOU found it "easy" that everyone would find it so... that is, of course, so far from the truth to be almost laughable.
and we do help people...
I'll tell you what is NOT helpful... someone coming into a thread/question and saying "it's really easy, just do it"
Another thing that us unhelpful... someone coming in with mistaken information and suggestions that are not relevent (which you frequently do)
So... it's not about the ego. It's about our desire to give people correct information and to not downplay the difficulties they might be having.
Ah but that's kind of my point. Some of the "help" offered by some isn't helpful. Some of it is sufficiently unhelpful that it confuses people by talking about things that are irrelevant, like how this topic has become derailed with talk of some secret cabal.
whatever. you guys are comical. the ego with y'all is measured in tons.
Hey, I'm not the one who responded to a topic on "I'm having trouble getting my members to post" with a massive long explanation about how they should be selling things to people rather aggressively.
when the topic was generating revenue... yeah, that was off base. and little do you know about that subject, though you apparently claim expertise there as well?
you guys should get a room... if you don't already have one.
when i first came around SMF, the room wasn't full of ego. it is now. congrats.
isn't it amazing how fast the "ego" insult comes out when someone disagrees with you? but when they agree with you (or you with them), they're being "smart"?
Pshaw I say to you... pshaw.
I don't claim expertise there at all, I don't do online selling. I did freelancing for a while but that's not the same as having fairly strong opinions.
Thing is, you weren't there when the real egos were around, the egos that nearly forced the project to close back in 2010 (that I, and others, resigned from the team over). You weren't there when some elements of the team threatened to send DMCA notices to other members of the team, over what amounts to egotism.
Me, I'm tame and largely the only reason I hang around is because there are times I think my years of contributions might have been helpful. But then I have debates like this where my reaction is such a depressive one that I've been known to self harm over it because living with chronic depression for 20 years is good fun. And yes, I lash out at people. And ego? Sure, only I think I've put enough time and effort in to be afforded some leeway in terms of knowing stuff.
Still, if that's the case, why do you use things I've worked on? Better not use SMF 2.1 as most of its headline features were partially or completely written by me, but since I know squat, best not trust it, eh? Fortunately you haven't complained about any of the mods I made being removed, guess you don't use any of them, so no worries there, right?
QuoteI'm mostly only abrasive to people who waltz in and declare everything is easy (when it isn't) and when they end up using topics that are often tangentially related at best to show off how awesome they are, especially when whatever they are talking about really doesn't help the OP...
Exactly... Add to that that it is a poor job being said "easy".
Quote from: ArantorAre there good responsive SMF themes? Yes. They're not in the bounds of achievability for most SMF admins, not even the ones willing to get dirty with code, because most admins do not have the time or skill to achieve. The situation will improve once 2.1 goes live and people start adopting that as a base as it is on some level responsive, but I'm sure some will argue it isn't responsive enough.
Sadly very few, even among theme authors.
Quote from: Kindredmaking a theme responsive is **NOT** easy.
If you think it is, then you have a significant amount of knowledge that most admins lack - which MAY make it "easy" for you... but even that, I doubt.
Even if you have enough knowledge that you could call it "easy", it is still a lot of work. It really isn't the case here though, it is very far from that. Beginner level at best.
Quote from: drewactualsomething the great oracles only know? something that is mysterious and vague to everyone but those who seek profit? something that, unless presented with a signature by one 'in the club' is disturbingly yet not explained but with 'broken'?
If you were actually looking to improve yourself, I could take screenshots and point out the (many) broken to visually poor problems in your site. But I have the impression that probably would only serve to make you even angrier for pointing it out.
Quote from: drewactualbut this is my point: this place is supposed to help and encourage people to do it themselves- offer tools and assistance in the same spirit of cooperation open source was conceived with in the first place. it's my observation many here, and in the 'inner club' are extremely egotistical. it's not a good mix.
Except that you're not being helpful with the information you're giving. You're not giving the complete nor accurate information, and you're giving very vague pointers on what to do, with the sparsely few of it that is actually correct.
The short of it: Don't spread misinformation.
i have little doubt of your skill, Arantor. I've tried to make that clear. your contribution's are undeniable. as are Kindred's. that isn't what this is about. I really don't know what this is about or what solicited you guys to participate other then using the term "insider club" which brought you two in running.
in the end, personality is a worthless thing. it's deeds that measure a person. you guys and the rest of the team (that include's the insiders club) have left your mark on the world, and in a good way. a very good way. maybe you don't feel recognized enough for that? I don't know. nothing i say or offer is in debate of that.
what i DO debate is personality- which some take too serious. to include ourselves- we take ourselves too serious too. all of us. you aren't the only one who suffers, Sir- it's been a lifelong battle that led to strange and abrupt decisions- which was amplified by what my doc calls PTSD and what the VA sees as something of a disability. then, i'm thinking, all of that is also up to vantage and opinion, and flips right back to 'we take ourselves too serious'.
look, you guys are the rock stars of the site here. you guys help and you innovate. this isn't up for debate- it's that you could be a helluva lot more personable especially with people who you don't know and how what you present impacts them.
the toltec wisdom of the four agreements is applicable here, I think... I should employ it more than i do and i'm guilty as charged in that regard.
all of this circles back around to "it's not that hard" is encouraging someone to seek their own resolution. my child, who is almost six years old and came later in life than most, has a keen and remarkable intelligence- not only her literal intelligence which every single one of her teachers are stricken with, but her insight into people- it's an empathy that is rare. I have no friggin' clue where she got that from as i am strictly logical (and which should be said here: i ain't taking offense in this conversation one bit)... I would not in a hundred thousand years tell her "that is too difficult"... I may tell her "you're not equipped right now to do that, but you can learn" but I'd never exclude her by discouraging her.
that^ is an attempt to draw parallel/analogy. I can and do learn a lot from you guys. i massive amount of information i've taken from your posts and contributions. i'm not about to tell somebody what they're attempting is too difficult- instead i'll offer what i can to direct their efforts so they can figure it out on their own. I ain't going to direct someone to a site that sells something they can do on their own. if they don't have the time or inclination to learn, that is a different story. let them buy it or hire someone to do it if that's the case. for those asking advice on how it's done, there will be little hesitation to offer what i do know, even though it's not near as thorough as what you guys can- to get them started.
CSS... it ain't that hard. it is the easiest of these 'languages' required. a lot of stuff can be done with it that really makes pages POP apart from cookie cutter- i.e. 'themes'. PHP isn't that hard, but it easily escapes me without references handy. taking all the snippets of php functions, along with js/jquery while extracting data from db's and making them dance in concert? no- that is all you guys. i appreciate what you guys share... but discharging someone who does things differently or is asking about something which is a worthwhile pursuit to self-proficiency? that is wrong.
Quote from: drewactualsomething the great oracles only know? something that is mysterious and vague to everyone but those who seek profit? something that, unless presented with a signature by one 'in the club' is disturbingly yet not explained but with 'broken'?
If you were actually looking to improve yourself, I could take screenshots and point out the (many) broken to visually poor problems in your site. But I have the impression that probably would only serve to make you even angrier for pointing it out.
The short of it: Don't spread misinformation.
[/quote]
your impression is incorrect and demonstrates the folly of assuming. insofar as presentation, everything i've done on that particular site is my own- suggested by users? yeah... but done by me. i don't have near the institutionalized learning you people do- i taught myself. can it be done better? likely so (duh) but by the standards i have knowledge of required to get the job done, it works. it changes a little all the time, and as i discover and change issues... this differentiates me how from anyone else here?
Glad to be incorrect on that one then ;) But then don't call it "close to perfect" if you're aware of what you just said.
Everyone started somewhere, no one is born knowing programming. The difference is how you're acting about it.
For starters then: How do you test what you have done?
Quote from: Gwenwyfar on December 11, 2018, 02:56:26 PM
Glad to be incorrect on that one then ;) But then don't call it "close to perfect" if you're aware of what you just said.
Everyone started somewhere, no one is born knowing programming. The difference is how you're acting about it.
For starters then: How do you test what you have done?
'how' am i acting about 'it'? are we stuck on coding css as a skill? We'll have to agree to disagree if so- it is not hard. a reference book and an example, while looking at impacts of alterations, and no more than a week and just about anyone can be efficient enough with it is my position.
but.... to the question: I make a change and then view it on multiple devices, and ignoring antiquated browsers and devices. as soon as it is settled, which will no doubt be some time, i'll stop h2 pushing it on every arrival, and cache it instead. i know no other way than to see what it looks like through different browsers/devices... fortunately, google analytics allows me to see what devices the vast majority (97+%) use to view the site- so it reduces how much effort to be cross-browser/device consistent.
i have issues with forms- not their function but their presentation. i was also told by users they prefer to scroll right and have more room to reply or make a thread than be constrained in a form field where they can't easily look back. these are buried in the templates for most parts.
what images are broken for you?
No, css really isn't hard to learn the basics. That's not what I was referring to.
That is helpful to do, but it is very limited. The amount of different devices and sizes is enormous, even if just for the sheer limitation of "you can't own them all", it's not a good way to test it.
Try going to the browser's "mobile mode" and going through all sizes slowly (not the preset sizes, resize the window and go through all of it, somewhere in the range from 320px to 900px is enough for most cases). You should already notice problems in many different width ratios doing this. It is also going to be easier to fix problems than testing on a real device, since you have the inspector and all that.
I haven't looked at how are the forms, but maybe they're just too small?
You might want to research BrowserShots or Selenium...
I will do this, Gwenwyfar, as it is something i want to be 'right'. thank you for your offering. right now the css is set to 650px- and i've attempted to use fluid constraints to manage it- and with varying results. most recently i've started to use view points (view-width [vw] and view-height [vh]) and abandoning percentages.... it's a mix (aka mess) right now. i should complete that hopefully after the Christmas, where some time may appear.
and for the record... as i went back to look- I don't mean to say MY site response is 'perfect'... i get my hack up and go into defense mode and give people exactly what i think they expect of me... what i DO want to say is that a responsive action decided by CSS is 'perfect'. there is a lot of things outside css than need to be addressed to make it truly 'responsive', but using CSS to make a page respond IS the 'perfect' solution, even if not practical in the case of 2.x (with lots of embedded style).
Quote from: Arantor on December 11, 2018, 03:16:28 PM
You might want to research BrowserShots or Selenium...
It doesn't replace doing the basic tests above though. It's more to check browser compatibility. And for mobile the companies that do live testing are paid.
@drewactual: I see, that wasn't what it looked like. Good luck with it :)
It can be a useful alternative, and Selenium lets you automate all kinds of things...
I never actually used selenium. I looked over it a couple times and I could never figure out what's the point compared to other browser tests like BrowserStack. I can't imagine what use is there to automate something you can do in the browser.
Maybe I'm missing something, but I can only think of it being useful to companies who are going to run all sorts of tests :P What would you say is the use of it in this case?
Writing tests! Consider the situation of telling the browser to resize and be able to verify what was visible and what wasn't, so you could change it and know you hadn't broken things.
While that is interesting, that is the least of my concerns as it is not a common problem to happen. What if it is all visible but looks mangled?
What about simultaneously testing many pages all at once? That would be very useful. The same but telling you everything that has changed at which width would be nice too.
Mangled is a thing you do have to do by eye, but it certainly wouldn't be that hard (at least not for me, I've done it) to set up a setup whereby a Selenium server farms out requests to browsers to generate a set of screenshots at different sizes. So the cycle becomes "tweak some code, run a script, observe all the screenshots".
That mostly depends how far down the rabbit hole you are - I do a fair amount of test automation at work so adding tools for resizing browsers for responsive mode checking is no big deal on top of automated functionality testing. (I already have it capable of screenshots or videos of test runs as required)
now that my 'season' is over and i don't fear diving into the site again, I've made a lot of changes to the templates and css, and using the tools you guys have offered. can i get one of you to give a cursory look at it and give me your impressions? i would really appreciate it.
and Arantor: I'm not letting it go, Sir, you gave me something you worked on and i at least owe you funds to buy yourself a lunch... please send address.
Huh, I completely missed this, probably due to the edit marking this as read.
Quote from: Arantor on December 12, 2018, 03:18:19 AM
Mangled is a thing you do have to do by eye, but it certainly wouldn't be that hard (at least not for me, I've done it) to set up a setup whereby a Selenium server farms out requests to browsers to generate a set of screenshots at different sizes. So the cycle becomes "tweak some code, run a script, observe all the screenshots".
That mostly depends how far down the rabbit hole you are - I do a fair amount of test automation at work so adding tools for resizing browsers for responsive mode checking is no big deal on top of automated functionality testing. (I already have it capable of screenshots or videos of test runs as required)
Yep, exactly why something automating screenshots and comparisons would be more useful. And multi-page testing would actually be pretty handy too, but if something does it I didn't find anything (even better if it's like the browser itself, and resizing one resizes all pages as they display side by side).
If you were to go all the way on it, you could also compare images themselves and scan for differences and highlight them... now whether someone out there already did that is another story. As for me, I don't have the skills and I would not use it that much to be worth the time investment, so I'll keep dreaming someone invents something similar out of the box >:D
Quotenow that my 'season' is over and i don't fear diving into the site again, I've made a lot of changes to the templates and css, and using the tools you guys have offered. can i get one of you to give a cursory look at it and give me your impressions? i would really appreciate it.
I'll take a look later :)
Quote from: drewactual on January 25, 2019, 10:44:07 AM
now that my 'season' is over and i don't fear diving into the site again, I've made a lot of changes to the templates and css, and using the tools you guys have offered. can i get one of you to give a cursory look at it and give me your impressions? i would really appreciate it.
and Arantor: I'm not letting it go, Sir, you gave me something you worked on and i at least owe you funds to buy yourself a lunch... please send address.
I gave it away for free in the hopes it would be useful, and I got something out of it along the way, you honestly owe me nothing :)
Wow. Didnt know the turn this thread took. Look man, I first dabble in smf responsive themes in 2013. Some can say I was one of the few in that area but took a 5 year leave due to personal reasons. Now I'm back and I have 3 responsive themes here in the theme site. Are they perfect? Hell no, and I'm pretty good at html and css but lack in php knowledge but i read and search a lot here on smf to help me learn. I suggest you try the 50 or so responsive themes and adapt them to your purposes. My themes as well as others are mobile friendly and get the job done. Chill out man, we're not here for the money. My themes are free. Period.
Btw, I too wrench and can install a blower.
i was having a bad day and vented some of that here, to which i apologize. no excuses.
'perfect' is a purely CSS responsive presentation, by my reckoning. I've achieved a good portion of that. You're right, I could use 'one of the many available and adapt it to my needs', but that isn't the point... the point is doing it myself and having something unique.
I have four (validator) errors on my page currently- mostly from where i drag WordPress into the foray. Google's pagespeed rates the page a 100 for desktop and a 97 for mobile. The presentation isn't bad, but there are plenty of loose ends around. the most challenging things to me are rooting out inline style and extracting it so i can make things work with the external file exclusively. That is my intent, and I think it can be accomplished with persistence... I stand by the solution being the 'perfect' solution, though a lot of html adjustments have to be made to prepare that solution.
As a for instance, i played with flexbox's, column/cell display, and all kinds of other more localized notions- just to return to basic relative div's for layout framework 'bones'... I screwed myself while doing that by leaving a lot of tags laying around buried in the various templates... there is nothing more frustrating to me than struggling with rules i know should behave one way yet don't, and end up just making a note of it and slapping a band aide on it.... just to circle back around and discover the reason the rule didn't behave, and realize i didn't note the 'band aide' adjustments.... it's a running firefight, but one i enjoy. it keeps my mind occupied.
by the way, you wouldn't be the Mick that wrote Bella Citta premium theme would you?
edited to add: I've made a @media rule with a break point of 1024px, and one for screens excess of 1800px i think it was- once i get this one as close to perfect as it'll get, i'll start on screens <450px..... as it is, i'm fortunate to find the vast majority of my users are in the US and 'predictable' in what they use to browse... the vast majority of phones being actually being used will support the design as is, and best i can tell there is not a single one that triggers the 1800+px so far. my parameters are likely a lot more defined than many who try to do this. it gives me wiggle room to focus on things and figuring the rest is 'okay for now'.
IT IS YOU!!!!! Check your PM's, I've sent you at least two from here... https://www.idesignsmf.com/index.php?topic=357.0
this theme in question began life as YOURS... your Bella Citta theme. I snatched it a few years ago, and found myself working with it when it was the only theme in my collection remaining on the server.
please check it out- long story short, I have the lions share of your theme adapted, and ready for you to take over. I DID use the majority of your assigned divs, spans, ect, but added a bunch of my own. what remains of your theme is very little, at this point insofar as even the index.template is concerned. I will gladly hand it over to you as a start if you were to consider making that theme responsive as well.
the folder/directory that theme is in remains named 'bellacitta', and the lions share of the 'js' directory is intact. the images aren't, where icons are concerned.
I've never butchered a theme like i did yours in this instance- but the theme DID begin as yours (very little remains, though, except for what is described above)... long story short: your theme was in my directory and available for 'chop' while i used the smf editor to edit it (was in a sandy hot place at the time and couldn't load applications like filezilla or access cpanel due to big brother's network policy)... I will gladly offer you credit back for it and post it if you request- and as stated, you're a good ways ahead by taking the @media css rendering it responsive.
Quote from: drewactual on January 25, 2019, 07:30:32 PM
IT IS YOU!!!!! Check your PM's, I've sent you at least two from here... https://www.idesignsmf.com/index.php?topic=357.0
this theme in question began life as YOURS... your Bella Citta theme. I snatched it a few years ago, and found myself working with it when it was the only theme in my collection remaining on the server.
please check it out- long story short, I have the lions share of your theme adapted, and ready for you to take over. I DID use the majority of your assigned divs, spans, ect, but added a bunch of my own. what remains of your theme is very little, at this point insofar as even the index.template is concerned. I will gladly hand it over to you as a start if you were to consider making that theme responsive as well.
the folder/directory that theme is in remains named 'bellacitta', and the lions share of the 'js' directory is intact. the images aren't, where icons are concerned.
I've never butchered a theme like i did yours in this instance- but the theme DID begin as yours (very little remains, though, except for what is described above)... long story short: your theme was in my directory and available for 'chop' while i used the smf editor to edit it (was in a sandy hot place at the time and couldn't load applications like filezilla or access cpanel due to big brother's network policy)... I will gladly offer you credit back for it and post it if you request- and as stated, you're a good ways ahead by taking the @media css rendering it responsive.
Yup, I did Bella Cita in 2013. Its non responsive and pretty much generic. My own site uses Pixel theme and has been responsive since 2013 including SimplePortal mod (landing page). Many edits that quite frankly i wouldnt know how to share my edits. I was gone for 5 yrs and picked it up again this past July. No changes on my site since other than colors. That Bella Cita theme I dont even offer it for download on my site, I forgot all about it lol. Anyways, these days Im a lot better at themeing. That theme is yours to do what you want. Chop it, cut it, burn it, its yours. But I still think you should try todays themes and adapt them to your needs. I use Deluxe theme as a boiler plate. Its a default theme knock off non responsive back in 2013 that i still use today to build new themes but Dani theme is my go-to theme making boiler plate as of late. Every theme i make, gets better and better but Deluxe started it all.
I don't want to be a pain or beg, but... I'd truly appreciate a review from the crowd here..
the site scores higher than most 'responsive' themes found in the themes section here, and it is burdened with a lot of mods those aren't. but machines reviewing isn't human interaction or eyes of design experts. I could ask folks who don't know anything about this to critique, but... that isn't productive. the score is dependent largely by the stories the aggregate drags in (imports via WP and is shown on the forums index sidebar) from time to time it will be lower, but i've not seen pagespeed score it lower than 85-mobile or 94-desktop.
thoughts?
Looks a little better than before.
A few quick notes: The boardindex and messageindex look iffy, there's no point in all that empty whitespace squeezing the text (and it doesn't need to be so large). Same in topics, and other places are actually the other way around: Things are too glued together.
It's a sad thing that many sites score so low in those tests, but close to 100 is above average. Responsive tests also mostly just check if nothing breaks, in the way a computer can recognize it, so pretty much it checks if nothing overflows and if there are no elements that are too small. Basically it can check if it was made to be responsive or not, and little else, it's hardly any measure of quality. If there are 'responsive' themes that can't get a good score on this, well...
thank you.
yup- that's precisely what i mean about machines instead of human eyes- metrics used don't equate to ease of human interaction with the page.
I'll get on the whitespce issue.... thank you, once more.
HOLY CRAP! De-rail city. Wow was that some powerful ****** reading through there.
Anyway, I appreciate everybody's work here and I fall into the category where nothing is easy, no matter what anybody says. I look at coding similar to the tv show "Extreme Engineering". I wonder how the **** did somebody one day decide screwing this together, and welding that in conjunction with placing hand made parts on will achieve XYZ goal? I see coding the same way. I can write very simple HTML that I gleaned off of snippets all over the internet but I can't for the life of me figure out how the hell anybody comes up with these scripts and makes them function with so many different working parts.
Crazy, anyway, thanks to all for everything you do. I think its so very cool when I need a fix and somebody knows exactly what it is. Even when I describe it with zero technological foundation, to the point where what I'm explaining doesn't even make sense to me.
Interesting topic.
I know the (derailed) discussion have more or less cooled down - which is good - just thought I put a couple of points in there: CSS is simple enough(relatively speaking) but SMF is a large project with many templates and different kind of designs throughout the different parts (adding to it whole new functions through mods and their own templates) so it IS quite an ordeal to make a fairly responsive theme for it. At least SMF2.0, 2.1 is a little better in that respect.
One other thing I'd like to point out is that creating a good theme isn't just about being fluent in CSS.. In fact, if you are less than comfortable in working with the pure visual side of it, its going to be hard. Even for those that are, it will take time to tweak something quite right. Of course, your mileage may vary as to what is good enough but I for one is a bit of stickler to details around this. :D
The solution are perhaps good foundation themes - thats how most started out anyway, building on another theme(default mostly). Trouble is..there aren't many other than default theme itself that are *that* highly tuned, both code and visually speaking. There should be more of them but for various reasons its not.
You're not still thinking about SMF themes, are you? That way lies madness. ;)
Quote from: Antechinus on May 26, 2019, 06:36:51 PM
You're not still thinking about SMF themes, are you? That way lies madness. ;)
lol
Interesting read. I'll just say that making a site mobile is a lot of hard work and most importantly it is ONGOING. You may address an issue today and find that some user somewhere may have trouble with it and then you have to address the issue again. A lot of planning has to go into a multi-function theme because you have to decide what is the most important for a mobile user to see / access and yet not take away from a desktop user. In other words, its more than pretty colors and things that slide and fade away.
Quote from: Looking on May 26, 2019, 09:12:53 PM
Interesting read. I'll just say that making a site mobile is a lot of hard work and most importantly it is ONGOING. You may address an issue today and find that some user somewhere may have trouble with it and then you have to address the issue again. A lot of planning has to go into a multi-function theme because you have to decide what is the most important for a mobile user to see / access and yet not take away from a desktop user. In other words, its more than pretty colors and things that slide and fade away.
Definitely something will have to be hidden/transformed etc. The whole decision making of that will set the tone for a whole theme, so its not like you can easily re-use it in another - at least if you plan to write different html for the next theme.
That said..using CSS grid's template areas I believe will ease this bit somewhat.
You always have the option of using two themes, with mobile theme being displayed only on mobile devices. There's a mod that does this, it's outdated (2012) and doesn't work well out-of-box, but can be upgraded with third party code, and configured to select which devices see which code. Been tinkering with it for couple of weeks, have it set up so desktops, laptops, tablets see main theme, phones see mobile theme. It's a bit squirrelly, the mobile detect code probably requires constant updates, but good thing is main theme is not affected, and you still have a large choice of non-responsive themes. Still a wip, but I have it running here (http://www.thekrashsite.com/forum/index.php).
I like a little bit of responsive even on a desktop theme, just so things stay tidy even if you're temporarily using a small window for it. Only has to be clean down to about 800px wide though, which usually easy just by dropping a couple of redundant boxes that are really only there to fill up space on a large screen.