Future changes

[Brogan]

I'm not being deliberately difficult, if anyone was wondering (it has been known ).

I try to keep third party add-ons to a minimum, for various reasons:

• The code quality can't be guaranteed to be as high as the core
• Having more add-ons potentially results in more database queries and slower page loads
• Possible conflicts and bugs with the core and other add-ons
• Adapting the add-on to our custom style can be a significant amount of work
• Maintaining and updating add-ons after core or add-on upgrades can again be a lot of work

This is what is currently installed:

As you can see, Bookmarks has been disabled and will most likely be removed completely due to the lack of use.
The first one, adding a poll to existing threads, I'm hoping will become a core feature at some point.
The CTA ones will of course be staying as they are unique to our site.
The Custom BBCode Manager is essential but one day I hope that functionality is also in the core.
Minorin is the plain text editor toolbar; not essential but very useful.
Nodes As Tabs allows us to have custom, focussed tabs in the nav bar - which is how the Home page tab is done. Those of you with good memories may remember that tab never used to stay focussed when on the home page.
TaigaChat speaks for itself.
XenForo Enhanced Search is an upgrade from standard MySQL search and is based on elasticsearch - it gives us a few more features and options and is a lot quicker than standard search.
The tagging add-on everyone knows about.

So that's where we are with add-ons.
More than I'd like but all of them are essential or extremely useful.
I will of course add others which are highly desirable or useful.

 

[jez101]

You do whatever you think is right Brogan - you do an incredible job on this site every day. As far as I'm concerned, whatever you think is good is good by me. If something mobile comes along, I'm in for trying it. That's all

 

[Brogan]

As far as a responsive style is concerned, I realised that it would never work on this site as we have content which has a minimum width, such as the page nodes and even the home page itself.

Not to mention the gallery which is due to be installed and the FF1 add-on which has some very wide tables.

A responsive style will really only work on a "pure" forum with just textual content and definitely won't work when elements on pages have minimum widths.

In which case, any future update to the core software which does include any sort of responsive element would need to be disabled.

 

[ExtremeNinja]

It's only tables that have minimum widths, surely, because of the natural structure of the markup and the data contained. The rest is set in CSS and by block elements such as images and videos. The CSS comes with the responsive theme and the images are normally resized by javascript, also within the responsive theme. To get around tables not fitting into the view pane you simply contain them in a <div> and set overflow to scroll in the CSS.

I can't see that anything other than tables on CTA will cause a problem, in not fitting into the view-port, but that is the same problem for all websites.

I should clear up some terminology as well, actuall, as there are two different types of "responsive" website and they are mistakenly often called the same thing. "Responsive" is generally fluid between the breakpoints whereas "Adaptive" jumps between the break points. Adaptive is easier to implement and a responsive theme can easily be made adaptive with some small edits to the CSS.

 

[Brogan]

Not just tables: the home page, the race hub pages, the FF1 add-on and the OTDB add-on.
Certain elements on those pages must have fixed widths, due to the nature of them.

Having massively wide tables scroll on overflow just isn't practical as 90% of the table won't be visible.

The only option would be to disable all of those elements and the site would be crippled, making it useless.

 

[ExtremeNinja]

I know you don't like me disagreeing with you on things like this, so please take my comments as me being helpful, but there is nothing on the homepage at all that needs to be a fixed with. CSS floats take care of that in a couple of lines.

Surely tables that you have to scroll to view on a mobile device are better than tables that you have to zoom and then scroll on a mobile device as is current.

If you point out the bits that you think would be a problem then I can offer you simple solutions for all of them and would be willing to even jump in write the CSS for you one Saturday night or something.

It does sound like you have made up your mind but I am certain that the obstacles that you are noting are little bumps rather than mountains and some may not even be problems at all.

I hope that's useful. I'm here if you do want to explore further.

 

[Brogan]

I'm aware of the solutions for some of it, I just don't think they are practical, nor reasonable.

The Google charts however must be a fixed width or they don't work.

I could of course always ditch the non standard content.

 

[ExtremeNinja]

Responsive Google Charts:

I guess you are being sarcastic about ditching the non-standard content.

 

[Brogan]

We don't use those ones.

 

[ExtremeNinja]

Those responsive charts are awesome. I was a little behind on that. Now firmly in my toolkit! I can think of a lot of scenarios that this is going to help me with in the future.

 

[ExtremeNinja]

OK. Which ones do you use? I am actually more interested in this for my own needs now than anything else but the offer of help to you is still there.

If I find out anything along the way that could be of use to you then I'll probably keep it to myself.

It would be cool if you could point me at what you are using though just to speed up my new personal research mission.

 

[Brogan]

Even without the Google stuff, I have no idea how a table which is over 1000px wide (and has a stupidly small font to make it even fit that) and has several hundred rows would work on a 300px wide screen.

To all intents and purposes it would be completely useless.

This page for example: http://cliptheapex.com/fantasy-f1/gps/bahrain.882/
The Selections tab in particular.

Some content is just never going to work on very small screens.

 

[ExtremeNinja]

It's just as useless on a 300px screen now, though.

[Edit]You wouldn't be trying to fit it on the screen. iPhone for example fits it on the screen now by zooming out on the page. An pretty much all CTA pages at the moment you have to load the page, zoom in, read content, zoom out, use navigation to another page, zoom in and repeat. With tabular data, once you have zoomed in enough to make it readable then the table (in fact the whole page) becomes a scrolling exercise. With responsive there would be no zooming and the only scrolling would be around the table with no need for zooming and with the page furniture remaining static.

 

[ExtremeNinja]

Is it the SVG charts API that you are using, Brogan. I'm gonna leave you to it as far as the CTA stuff is concerned but if you could point me the right way for me own purposes then it might help to stop me selling someone something that they can't have.

 

[Brogan]

ExtremeNinja, you will be pleased to know that I am currently testing the new build of XenForo, which has responsive built in.
There are some issues with it though, mainly to do with the OTDB, FF1 and Race Hub - those pages will probable have to have responsive disabled due to the tables and charts.
Oh, and there is a bug with Chrome for Android on tablet devices which means fixed width sites have large margins making the text size too small.

However, I think a useful compromise will be to keep the current style and create another style which is responsive.
That will then give members the choice.

I haven't yet decided whether to make the fixed or responsive style the default (which guests/logged out members will see automatically), I will have to do some testing.

That is still a way off though, there is a lot of work involved to get the site ready to upgrade to 1.2.

 

[Mephistopheles]

So much for you trying to cut down on the amount of admin work you do Brogan, don't burn yourself out buddy....