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Mobile front-end theme
I would like to have a specific front-end theme for iDevices and mobile phones (iPhone, iPod). I know Wordpress and other systems offer this as an add-on, but I have no idea how to achieve this in Textpattern. There is the great back-end mobile theme, but how can this be done for the front-end? Is there a plug-in or anything simple to add to Txp?
Yoko for Textpattern – A free blog theme • Minimum Theme – If all you want to do is write.
Note: I am currently not actively using Textpattern, so I am not in the forums very often
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Re: Mobile front-end theme
I was wondering about this also.
I would say you could use the plugin act_if_mobile and then your possibilities should be endless.
Am I correct?
…Prrrrrrrr…
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Re: Mobile front-end theme
I was hoping for a more “out-of-the-box” solution but the plug-in does seem nice and quite powerful indeed.
Yoko for Textpattern – A free blog theme • Minimum Theme – If all you want to do is write.
Note: I am currently not actively using Textpattern, so I am not in the forums very often
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Re: Mobile front-end theme
Do you mean you want the default textpattern front end theme to be optimised for viewing any size screen – or 2 completely separate themes (one for large screen, one for small screen).
I’m in the former camp – just one default theme that scales nicely to whatever screen size you are on, a simple example here – view it on an iphone or make your browser window smaller to see scaling (in capable browsers). Scales in to 320px wide minimum.
Won’t happen until TXP5 though.
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Re: Mobile front-end theme
I used CSS media queries on my own TXP site to make it mobile-friendly (see below). It was pretty simple, and looks good on mobile devices. I have yet to put in some JS that allows users to switch between mobile and desktop, though.
Nice to learn about that plugin, too :D
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Re: Mobile front-end theme
@philwareham
I guess I am in the second group – I’d like two independant designs for the front – one for regular browsers and one that fits the small mobile devices (not scale the regular one down).
What happens with Txp5 that will include this mobile theme?
It appears that Ryan Jerz once posted a tip that is very useful and I only found it by googling the plugin: Txp Tips – Using CSS to create a mobile friendly site
Yoko for Textpattern – A free blog theme • Minimum Theme – If all you want to do is write.
Note: I am currently not actively using Textpattern, so I am not in the forums very often
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Re: Mobile front-end theme
It appears that Ryan Jerz once posted a tip that is very useful and I only found it by googling the plugin: Txp Tips – Using CSS to create a mobile friendly site
Wow, how did I never see that?? Thanks for the link.
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Re: Mobile front-end theme
My gut feeling is that responsive web pages are the future, not additonal txp tags and coding for mobile devices.
Bear in mind we are talking about a default theme that would theoretically be part of the standard TXP install – I’m not one of the developers so I can’t comment on what will or won’t be part of TXP5, though I doubt something like act_if_mobile will ever be part of the core for the following reasons:
1. It forces you to create a lot of extra separate code for mobile browsers. Well planned CSS and page structure can perform this task without having to maintain more code.
2. Where do you draw the line between a ‘mobile browser’ and a desktop browser (the iPad in landscape mode is perfectly capable of displaying a larger sized site yet it is still a mobile browser). Much better to target screen resolutions with CSS media queries.
3. Not every mobile device is an iPhone with a 320px portrait resolution, so if you make mobile targeted thumbnail images at 300px wide (a method discussed in the txp tips link above), what happens when mobile resolutions get larger (eg. iPhone 4 retina display and Windows Mobile 7)? – you’re stuck with a load of images too small for the viewport.
Where I can see a good use for act_if_mobile is to provide such things as alternative site navigation methods for small devices.
Anyway, that’s just my humble opinion. By all means let me know your thoughts on the matter.
Last edited by philwareham (2010-11-05 23:42:48)
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