We haven't decided yet on what approaches 4.0 (which is the next major update) will take. I'm also a fan of responsive sites to a point, but we need to think about a few things:

1) The time investment in making the skin responsive. IPB isn't like a website; we have a vast number of page components, in a variety of use cases, and every one would need to be considered and designed for responsive layouts.

2) How easy it is for novice website owners to modify our software. While many sites just change some colors and .maintitle, others go further and want to wrap IPB in their website template. Would these changes work with a responsive layout? How would we enable people to continue the responsive design to their own parts?

3) Would skinners be prepared to accept being required (essentially) to be responsive-compatible? It adds an additional workload if there's more than simple changes from the default skin. This could perhaps be solved by having some css class that turns off responsive layouts, but is that a good solution?

4) How do we handle custom pages in IP.Content? Do we need to provide features in IP.Content to make responsive pages more feasible, or attempt a one-size-fits-all approach in a responsive view? Of course, we haven't solved this for the separate mobile view yet, either.

5) Do we provide the facility to view the 'full' version still? If so, what's the benefit over a separate mobile view?

6) Given the five points above, is responsive the best approach for our software? There's nothing inherently wrong with a separate mobile view in my opinion, given that the core software can seamlessly detect mobile devices, so it's a case of weighing the pros and cons.


Working with responsive layouts would be a huge change for us given the scope of the suite, so it's not something we can just jump into. It's something we'll be talking about though :smile: Another possibility is retaining a separate 'mobile' view, but making that responsive so that it's useful on touch devices of differing sizes.

It's not so simple. There are different ways of accomplishing the same thing too. There are also many issues to take into account, including placement for advertising and proper scaling in the default skin. It's not an undertaking to be taken lightly.

A bump since one of the most anticipated resposive designs has gone live http://www.microsoft.com

...also an interesting backstory: http://rainypixels.com/words/the-story-of-the-new-microsoft-com/

Responsive design has it's challenges. Specifically when it come to advertising and Adsense. However, Google is a big proponent of responsive design, and I anticipate they'll adapt soon.

Thanks for the discussion. I didn't expect anything would happen overnight, but it would be nice to see some skinners respond with responsive themes, and IPB keep an eye on it for future implementation, or just to make it easier for custom skins to take advantage.

I personally will be converting the default template into a responsive design.

It does have it's challenges but it's mostly learning how to properly design for the size. If you start with the smallest and go up, it get's easier.
John

I don't care as long custom skins aren't nuked again.

Now that the Android app is gone and there are no apps for other platforms than iOS, I think its very important to have a responsive design.

Responsive design would cater to:

1. mobile phone users
2. tablets
3. HDTV large screen browsers
4. game consoles
5. whatever new pops up in the future.

Without it we are missing a very large chunk of internet users.

Alternatives like tapatalk and forumrunner each have significant problems, because:

• forum runner is owned by Internet Brands and its very unclear if user data will not be abused. Internet Brands makes multi-millions from ads on their thousands of websites and rivals with websites that have forum runner installed.
• Tapatalk has serious bugs and spams your users with advertisements of their products. Some of their services like their chrome notifier can crash your website.

Responsive design would cater to:

• mobile phone users
• tablets
• HDTV large screen browsers
• game consoles
• whatever new pops up in the future.

Without it we are missing a very large chunk of internet users.

This is exactly why we have been busy changing most of our important websites to responsive designs.

I strongly hope that IPB takes hold of this idea and produces a default responsive design to help bring our communities into an easier transition for what ever end-users decide to use. Personally, I don't like the idea of relying on extra apps.

A responsive layout and a mobile app aren't really equivalent. We will be creating a much enhanced mobile interface in 4.0. Whether it will be responsive or not remains to be seen.

I don't care as long custom skins aren't nuked again.

:smile: They're going to build a completely new design for 4.0 and Matt has said that it will be heavily centered around SEO (that's his goal anyway). My assumption is that custom skins will indeed be nuked again. If not, then they'll be extremely difficult to upgrade, and it might even be easier to just start from scratch.

Completely my assumption though and I have no idea what the scope of "a completely new design" is. I'm attributing it to the scope of the 3.1.4->3.2 move though. Especially if they add in HTML 5 support and completely revamp the header so it's not so code heavy like I'm thinking they want to do. :smile:

design that I expect to have in the next version should be something that comes close to Cloudsstyle ... plus put his hand in the row of the list of forums such EasyCloud for animate or adapting the look to its function ... using more css (such as :hover, blink)

(sorry for my bed english)

:smile: They're going to build a completely new design for 4.0 and Matt has said that it will be heavily centered around SEO (that's his goal anyway). My assumption is that custom skins will indeed be nuked again. If not, then they'll be extremely difficult to upgrade, and it might even be easier to just start from scratch.

Completely my assumption though and I have no idea what the scope of "a completely new design" is. I'm attributing it to the scope of the 3.1.4->3.2 move though. Especially if they add in HTML 5 support and completely revamp the header so it's not so code heavy like I'm thinking they want to do. :smile:

Think closer to 2.3 -> 3.0

I can almost (but not quite) assure you that custom skins for 3.x will not work on 4.x. It will be a major version change.