New Responsive Design for DCUM

[jsteele]

I am hoping to implement a new design that is responsive and adapts to the device that you are using. This will hopefully be much better for phones. I am inviting you to test a beta version of the design, which you can access at:

https://www.dcurbanmom.com/mobile/forums/list.page

Please test the site which should have all features working. If you discover any bugs, oversights, or just have suggestions for improvement, please post them here.

[Anonymous]

it doesn't look any different on my phone.

[Anonymous]

Thank you for the great update!

Some thoughts:

Maybe each Forum could be a link, without the list of other “sub-forums” underneath? Basically: Parenting Discussion Forums Link, then Relationship Discussion Forums link, and so on.

Also, inside of each forum, maybe less info for each of the topics (on my phone, it looks a little bit too busy the way it is).

[jsteele]

What kind of phone did you use? Are you sure that you access the beta site?

[Anonymous]

Web developer here - I agree that it feels too busy on mobile when you are in the forum trying to see the topics.

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:Thank you for the great update!

Some thoughts:

Maybe each Forum could be a link, without the list of other “sub-forums” underneath? Basically: Parenting Discussion Forums Link, then Relationship Discussion Forums link, and so on.

Also, inside of each forum, maybe less info for each of the topics (on my phone, it looks a little bit too busy the way it is).

The problem with using a responsive design is that it is hard to limit changes to just the mobile version. They tend to impact both versions. Neither of your ideas are impossible to implement for mobile-only, but the sub-forum idea is fairly challenging.

If I understand your second suggestion, you are referring to the number of replies, views, first and last post, etc? If so, I agree but in a previous attempt to use a design similar to this, mobile users were pretty strident about wanting the same info as desktop users. So, I have implemented it even though I think we could do without some of it.

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:Web developer here - I agree that it feels too busy on mobile when you are in the forum trying to see the topics.

What would you leave out?

[Anonymous]

I like the clean look, though a few parts like first post/last message are running together a bit. Kind of miss the framing of the messages but can get used to it. Top banner ad and bottom banner ad are alternately getting slightly cut off or slightly covering comment boxes. Using an iPad.

[jsteele]

What if I change the design of the mobile version of the topics list to extend the title across the full width and then have the date, author, first post, last post, replies, views, etc underneath. The titles would stand out more and make scanning through them easier.

[Anonymous]

On my phone. Kind of disorienting at first but I liked it once I found Recent Topics!

[Anonymous]

I tried on both my laptop and my iPhone SE 2nd gen.

The laptop displayed larger topic titles on the main Forum pages. The post pages are definitely different, but I would not say superior in any way. The font is bigger, the buttons are a bit easier to see. The compose a new post page is a bit bigger and the buttons are easier to read.

On my mobile phone, there doesn't seem to be any difference.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I like the clean look, though a few parts like first post/last message are running together a bit. Kind of miss the framing of the messages but can get used to it. Top banner ad and bottom banner ad are alternately getting slightly cut off or slightly covering comment boxes. Using an iPad.

Just clicked the responsive link again and it looks totally different…now almost exactly like the regular version.

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:I like the clean look, though a few parts like first post/last message are running together a bit. Kind of miss the framing of the messages but can get used to it. Top banner ad and bottom banner ad are alternately getting slightly cut off or slightly covering comment boxes. Using an iPad.

Could you clarify whether it is a normal iPad, and iPad Pro, or an iPad Mini? A regular iPad is the one thing that I haven't test with yet.

[Anonymous]

Links on the Beta site on my mobile phone are occasionally taking two clicks rather than one? It's strange and inconsistent.

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I like the clean look, though a few parts like first post/last message are running together a bit. Kind of miss the framing of the messages but can get used to it. Top banner ad and bottom banner ad are alternately getting slightly cut off or slightly covering comment boxes. Using an iPad.

Could you clarify whether it is a normal iPad, and iPad Pro, or an iPad Mini? A regular iPad is the one thing that I haven't test with yet.

Regular iPad, 9th generation