Forum Style - Lightweight Style for Small Screen Devices (cell phone, iphone, mobile, android)

A lightweight *forum only style aimed at small screen devices such as Windows Smartphones, Nokias and even iPhones. It has VERY low bandwidth requirements - 15 times less on my site - 20K as opposed to 300K for forumhome.

*forum only - I have done a very small amount of rough work on CMS templates, a simple single column CMS *could* be created to work with this style without too much effort. However I am not sure if you can have a different CMS layout dependent on which style you are using?

This is an update to the mobile style I have previously released.

The changes are predominantly aesthetic to take advantage of larger screens.

It is also much easier to change colour schemes by editing the commented CSS file.

Demo: http://vbdev.org/forum.php?styleid=7

This is a a lightweight style and as such has much reduced functionality/information over the default vBulletin style.

Install instructions:

• Firstly, if upgrading, I recommend installing this as a new style rather than overwriting your previous install. This way you get to test it first without trashing your existing style.
• BACKUP YOUR EXISTING lightweight.css.php FILE IF YOU HAVE CSS CUSTOMISATIONS
• Download ZIP file
• Unzip to a local/temp directory
• Edit lightweight.css.php file to customise colours if required
• Upload contents of the upload directory in the zip file folder to your forum root.
• Install style XML via Style Manager in your ADMINCP
• **Install and configure "LightWeight Style Options"
• See post 2 for a FAQ
• Click "Mark as Installed"
• Test it out
• Leave a rating
• Leave feedback
• Enjoy checking your site from your mobile phone without the need to pinch/zoom/wait etc...

Version Control:

1.0.0 - 25 AUG 2010 - Initial Release on vBulletin.org
1.0.1 - 26 AUG 2010 - Fixed "Mark All Forums Read" link in Search results. Released Lightweight Style Options to customise this
1.0.2 - 21 MAR 2011 - Updated to 4.1.2, removed short tags from CSS, fixed some issues discovered since last release, added some stuff.
1.0.3 - 16 DEC 2011 - Updated to 1.0.3, tried to fix all known issues. Nothing new. If you have updated your site as bugs have been found, probably no need to upgrade. But if you're upgrading your site from to 4.1.9, might be worthwhile.
1.0.3a - 16 DEC 2011 - remove test ad hook code accidently left in postbit_legacy template

Branding Free:

The style is free to use. However I ask that you keep links in the footer. If you want to remove them - send me a donation of an amount you can afford, or that you think is fair/reasonable, it's up to you how much.

[dartho]

That'd be more of a vbulletin issue than a style issue, and I'm not sure why, or how to work around. Have you tested with a user account?

[Robru]

Works very well with vB 4.1.4

[djawir]

attachment problem on vbulletin 4.1.3 + vbseo + unixy varnish cache

cant download attachment, always redirect to login page

[djawir]

fixed varnish cache issue not style issue

[Mooff]

First i want to thank you for your great work. The lightweight style really is blazing fast.

Secondly i want to present the adjustment we made on our board hopeing to improve the usability considering every button is pressed by a huge finger instead of a small mouse on a smartphone display.

I'm not so much talking about the optical changes we made.

We have made one big technical change throughout the whole style. Instead of using text based links, we are using the whole div as a link, which immediately increases the clickable area, as shown on the attached screenshot. The whole grey area now functions as a link.

Here is a live demo: http://www.united-forum.de/?styleid=84


Just wanted to let you know and hope you are interested in including the technical change, since that would save us work (template changes) during an update.


previous-code:

<div class="forum{vb:raw forum.statusicon}"><img style="margin-top: 3px;" src="{vb:stylevar imgdir_statusicon}/forum_{vb:raw forum.statusicon}-16.png" alt="" align="left">&nbsp;<a href="{vb:link forum, {vb:raw forum}}">{vb:raw forum.title}</a></div>

spanlink-code:

<div class="forum{vb:raw forum.statusicon}" style="position:relative"><a href="{vb:link forum, {vb:raw forum}}"><span class="uf_spanlink"></span></a><span>{vb:raw forum.title}</span></div>

(sidenode, removing the img was purely cosmetic and has nothing to do with the technical change)
additional technical change in the css file:

.forumold,.forumnew,.forumlink, .forumold_lock, .forumnew_lock
{
...
+	position: relative;
}
.uf_spanlink
{
	position: absolute;
	width: 100%;
	height: 100%;
	top: 0;
	left: 0;
	z-index: 1;
}

For the thread view, the other links (lastpost etc.) do need z-index: 2, to be in front of the spanlink (which can be done via css) and these changes need to be made in about 10? or more templates. If someone is interested and my information is unclear, just ask.

Regards Mooff

[Winter Sonata]

Hello

Does this style recognize small devices ? or shall one change the defulat one once you enter the site ?

Thanks

[CardMafia]

Originally Posted by Winter Sonata

Hello

Does this style recognize small devices ? or shall one change the defulat one once you enter the site ?

Thanks

Set this style as the default for mobile devices in your admincp

[jerde]

Has anyone pursued to make this fully CMS compatible?

Dartho, how much donation would it take to get this done for CMS?

[dartho]

@Mooff - I'll have a look into that, thanks for the suggestion and code
@Sonata - what Card+++++ said! (this is just a style - no inbuilt detection, but VB has that)
@jerde - I've done some custom work on CMS for a specific site, but doubt this is directly transferable as the CMS's can be customised so much, so I have no plans at the moment on actually doing the CMS at present.

[jerde]

Understood, I was just thinking simplicity is better. Have a single column that shows the title, author, and content of the article. That's it. As long as it's fast, and people can read the news, that's all that matters.

Let me know if you would be willing to do a CMS customization for my site blackberryos.com? I'd send you a donation for your help.