Responsive VS Mobile styles
 

Hello all,

I've stucked on what is better to use in my vB site:

1. To chose of of the (very few) responsive styles that I found
2. To use the build-in Mobile style

First of all to make clear somethings:

1. I know how to build mobile templates
2. Even if it's a time waste, I'm using different php files for mobile devices to reduce the amount of queries and also show the most important content. This makes the mobile version very fast.

From the other hand a responsive style has it's own advantages with the most important that the interface is the exact the same (can't say that I like the poor mobile design).

Also I haven't use tapatalk which maybe is a good alternate solution?

What your opinion?

Thank you for your time
Chris

I prefer a true full responsive theme that will work on most modern browsers on any kind of device.
I have yet to see a theme for vBulletin 4 that is truly fully responsive on all pages.

For what I've found till now Dave, the only that appears to be a good solution is:
http://themecrate.com/

The only problem for me is that sidebar is not visible in mobile view, something very important for me as I'm adding there menus, data etc.

Other than this, nothing serious.

Yea that theme has some things that make me not consider it mobile friendly.
For example, you still have to click on the small hyperlinks in order to view a forum or a thread instead of making the whole div clickable.

Seems that you tested it more deeply than me :) ........ Didn't noticed that issue. What I found uncommon is that menus open on hover and not onclick something that messes the screen and confuse the user. But the author told me that it can be change easily to onclick.

Maybe you found any other style?

I found this one

http://vbulletin-theme.netron.web.tr/forum.php
http://vbulletin.web.tr/showthread.p...-Theme-Satista

I don't know how legitimate the site is though. Also in mobile the sidebar doesn't show. I've been looking for a good responsive theme to build off of for ages.

I prefer users have devices that don't require a mobile style. One responsive theme should serve all purposes. In reality, isn't virtually every device full HD now? I actually expect mobile devices to be 4K by this time next year.

They overdid the CSS/JavaScript effects. All those fade-in animations are very unnecessary.

what about the sultantheme styles? im using them for one project and for one thing you can upload images from them, that i dont know if you can do on some...like default mobile...

but more generally my approach is to go with responsive styles, then one we will strip back for ppl with limited data plans, but yeah i like that all in one with full function idea

Yeah they did. If it didn't have all that extra stuff it would be half way decent theme.

Even if I've agreed with you on this before (is really very friendly to click on div), I just seen that xenForo and IPB styles have the same functionality, so let's not count it as important disadvantage. Only Woltlab WBB has this functionality by default.

--------------- Added 17 Dec 2016 at 12:45 ---------------

I agree and really don't understand the need of so many fancy effects. The style itsself looks nice.

If you try the mobile style that is supplied by vBulletin, they have done it properly and you can click the divs which is so much better, in my opinion, than clicking on hyperlinks.

Ahaa.... Ok, I misunderstood. You compare it with vB Mobile style. I thought that you compare it with other responsive themes.

I know that vB Mobile has this functionality, and actually I prefer using it even if it needs extra coding.

Dave answered for me :)

Responsive is always better than mobile styles in every cases.

You can get a fairly effective responsive theme just by changing the existing style variables from pixels to percentages. It isn't perfect but the average user wouldn't know the difference.

I don't think it is simple like that. Have you tried this way on vB 4 default theme?

I've done several for clients using the @media rule by converting all the necessary CSS selectors from pixel units or percentages to em or rem units. It isn't difficult. It is extremely time consuming. That is probably why no one who has done one is posting it as a free style.

Using percentages instead of pixels will make it responsive, but it still will not make it mobile friendly.
A truly responsive mobile friendly theme will take a lot of time to make, so no surprise that there's no such theme out there yet.

I'm thinking that is impossible that nobody over internet (except sultantheme or webmastersun) is able to build a custom responsive skin for vbulletin 4.... any advice?

As said before, it takes a significant amount of time to make a truly responsive theme.
Even if there was one out there, I doubt it would be cheap/free.

Free? It is not my intention. So far I have always paid all that I could not do it alone.

All I have left to do with mine is make the text just a little more zoomed in on mobile.