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Responsive theme request

0

How about a responsive theme across all devices and old browser support, with bp1.5 support.

A very simple theme that works universally.

You can find an example if you search in google ‘wordpress’ and ‘skeleton’.

That would be super handy if it was released by wpmudev .

Johnny

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 11:24:04
  • Tammie
    • WordPress Wizard

    Love the idea but I’m responsive theme biased – I truly see it just as web design done well and should be done in as many cases as you can.

    Just to clarify you are thinking more ‘skeleton’ theme in this where you can brand yourself and colour? Or are you thinking just a simple style?

    I would sa you want some styling right so it appeals to more people.

  • Jonathan
    • The Incredible Code Injector

    @wecreateyou,

    would like to get some feedback on what you think is a “good” one

    My favorite at the moment and not on that list is bugis:

    Theme: http://www.elmastudio.de/wordpress-themes/bugis/

    Demo: http://bugis.elmastudio.de/

    Her other free theme yoko is pretty cool too :wink:

    Responsive Design at this stage is over my head, perhaps I should knuckle down and just try and create one to better understand the ins and outs.

    @Tammie,

    A skeleton theme sounds great, something we can style on top of a well built flexible structure :wink:

  • abdada
    • Flash Drive

    Responsiveness is a very important part of SEO, so it’s important to do a lot of manual recoding to any theme you use to increase responsiveness from the get-go.

    Using a cache plug-in will help a lot with responsiveness, but it’s more important to reduce IMG tags and possibly even have some of your JS script files hosted at a faster server. Google hosts plenty of JS scripts that are much faster than my servers, so I point to those.

  • Tammie
    • WordPress Wizard

    @abdada: No need for scripting and code bloat really you can easily just use 320 and up methods along with responsive image loading in the media queries. I’m sorry to say but it really is a misconception this adds any weight to a theme infact it can reduce it.

    I’m not sure though do you mean responsive as the design technique or responsive as in loads :slight_smile: Because responsive means something different in this discussion. Think adaptive design / responsive design for this discussion (sorry if that was what you were saying).

    As far as a skeleton goes I don’t think that’s the best way in it’s purest sense, with this providing a nice clean one would be. A pure skeleton is too sparce for this to work and probably would not be so useful to everyone and that’s one thing we do try. But in saying that, if there was a need. I just think we should avoid theme options and other complications as that’s not the point of this. It’s a minimal theme that can be used by anyone.

    @wecreateyou in my opinion unless you use the mobile first 320 and up method you really are shooting the server and your theme in the foot. It’s not that hard to do and the positives really are so vast from a load time point of view. Don’t be afraid to use auto gen drop down scripts for the menus like this one:

    https://github.com/mattkersley/Responsive-Menu

    Just remember that as much as possible needs to be em / % and don’t fuss about being pixel perfect because it’s not print – to me responsive design really is about taking that leap into realising it’s web not print. And yes I’m fairly keen on the subject :slight_smile:

  • abdada
    • Flash Drive

    It certainly can — if the theme developers are versed in writing responsive code.

    I use Yoast’s Google Analytics plugin on most of my sites ( http://yoast.com/site-speed-tracking-in-google-analytics/ ) and I’ve found plenty of commercial themes that are severely lacking in some areas — notably script and image handling.

    Doing plenty of n=1 A/B tests on your specific site is extremely important. On one of my hosts, they default to a PHP5 installation that is 1-2 seconds slower than their optional PHP5 optimized installation. Crazy, but true.

  • Tammie
    • WordPress Wizard

    @abdada: I’m sorry to say but I do still think you’re confusing the term responsive design with a site being responsive. We’re on about themes that work the same for all devices from mobile, ipad through to desktop. Is that what you are referring to? I understand it can be confusing terminology though.

  • wecreateyou
    • The Crimson Coder

    @Jonathan thanks for the link.. Nice simply clean layout. I like it.

    @Tammie Thanks for the tip on the 320 and up method and responsive menu. Just saved me a bunch of time and headaches.

    @abdada thanks for input … as Tammie says though I think we’re talking about two different subjects. but you are appreciated… :slight_smile:

  • Tammie
    • WordPress Wizard

    There is tons of good stuff responsive wise on github. I found only today a great little testing page for responsive designs there – try searching for responsive it’s quite good. There are a number of frameworks / layouts too but as to how well supported / good they are I don’t know.