[STYLING] IPhone stylesheet/theme

Raize · January 2009

Thanks man, should be a big hit...

matt · January 2009

I've been thinking about this...

I am slightly reluctant to go down the web-based route, simply because it is pretty slow and will be prone to breaking with the different and somewhat random selection of extensions each forum will have installed. It is also a good bit of work to do a theme, and I'm not really that familiar with the Vanilla PHP.

So: choices...

The Web approach
I could ask one of you guys to help do the PHP/theme to my spec, and my CSS and AJAX would sit on the top. That takes the pressure off me and onto either somebody else, or split between both of us.

The issues with the web based approach still hold: slow, breakable, a lot of work.

The App approach
I'm a certified iPhone developer with an app already in the App Store. So, I am considering doing a dedicated "Vanilla Forum" app, which would be available through the App Store at a small cost.

You'd launch the native app, enter your login credentials and the app would use the RSS2 extension as it's data source. The experience would be identical to my earlier iphone demo, but running as a native app rather than in Mobile Safari. Benefits of this approach would be speed increase, flexibility and ability to do "more", and it's price would fund it's development meaning I could work on it more. Cons are that it's a lot of work, but in a different way.

This is a fairly recent thought, so I'm still thinking it through...

Any thoughts?

Raize · January 2009

I would say a combination of both. The web approach is beneficial due to the fact that it allows universal access. Anyone with an iphone and an internet connection would be able to access the forum to read and make posts, exactly what people want to do be able to do on their phone. If their is already a web based Vanilla forum, the iPhone stylesheet should only kick in when an iPhone is detected. In the future, as the Android platform gains in popularity (which it will) another style could be developed which could kick in when an Android phone is detected. This would allow universal access to a forum on PC, on iPhone, and on Android devices and maintain real time consistency of posts and functionality. Now, the biggest benefit I see for an iPhone app is that you could make money. BUT I believe people would be willing to pay for a custom forum software that works smoothly on the iPhone whether or not it comes as an official app. Therefore, by taking the web based route you could still make money by selling it as a stand alone software which people would use to set up an iphone compatible forum. VBulletin makes lots of money this way, theres no reason you couldn't do the same thing except specifically for the iphone. An iPhone app would not allow people to set up their own forum...it sounds like it would only allow them to access a specific forum. Even then, that means that every forum owner would have to release their own specific version of the app to pull RSS data from their specific forum. I may have misunderstood you, but it seems unclear what the iPhone app would exactly do if released by you the developer. Final Thoughts: I think you should use the Vanilla software, have the iPhone theme built in, and market the product as a stand alone "iPhone forum software" kind of like Vanilla itself except specially for iPhones. There is a lot of buzz going on right now about how much money people are making from iPhone apps. It is clear that the money making potential is there. There are lots of people out there who don't know how to develop their own apps but they do know how to set up a forum and I'm willing to bet that they would pay 10 or 20 bucks to try out a forum software that allows them to "take advantage" of the iPhone's popularity. I know that there is vBulletin plugin that allows Vbulletin forums to be viewed on the iPhone but they are limited in functionality whereas Vanilla's clean slick interface would shine. On the flip side, I know I would use a forum on my iPhone to read and make posts if it was easy to use, at it appears your theme would be. I really see some potential here and if you do a google search you will see that this hasn't really been done yet.

matt · January 2009

Thanks for the detailed post! Lots of good thinking there.

I'm going to think some more about it. I also have a quick coding test I want to do on Monday when I'm back in the studio. Yes, I am self employed. Essentially the iPhone app is an RSS reader, but one that functions like my above demo, a bit like iPhone Mail. But with mine, you'd not realise it was using RSS as data unless told. And it would allow posting, searching etc.

Finally, would it be legal for me to sell a Vanilla Extension? What licence is Vanilla covered by?

Raize · January 2009

Well, it's open source...doesn't that mean that you could adapt it to whatever use and purpose you want?

matt · January 2009

Not always, it depends what open source licence (permissions) it has attached.

I'll look into it.

ps: dan39's simple user agent detection code works.

matt · April 2009

This has not been abandoned

ADM · April 2009

Something like this is really needed for me. Any updates on your progress? When can we expect a release?

mokr · April 2009

any update for this?

chris · May 2009

bump*

Bentot · July 2009

emsef any progress ?

matt · August 2009

I'm resuming work on this for Vanilla 2

Woo!

Todd · August 2009

Awesome! Give'r

Raize · August 2009

hallelujah!

rusty · August 2009

This is great news. I've been waiting for an iPhone stylesheet since I started my forum.

matt · August 2009

There already exists am iPhone theme for v1, but it's less than ideal.

This new one will be V2 only.

apticknor · August 2009

did anybody ever get this working. i've been at it for a few hours using the contents of the zip file and can't get it!

Raize · August 2009

2 things that are very important for Vanilla 2 to have:

1) Integration with Wordpress (similar to BBPress)

2) iPhone optimized theme (similar to the WPtouch plugin for Wordpress)

I think these will give Vanilla a significant competitive edge in today's market and get it even closer to the big leagues.

dejitaru · August 2010

*bump* hopaefully @matt is still out there

Raize · August 2010

1 year later... doubt it

But I'm pretty sure the Vanilla team will come up with something in this area... they've been doing some awesome work and best of all they've been listening :)

zodiacdm · August 2010

I was planning on working on a mobile web theme, though I didn't have the iPhone in mind so much...

It would be low on my to do list though... but it would be a great way to promote Vanilla.

empirikal · September 2010

If any developers out there know Vanilla's HTML/PHP View controllers pretty well and want to collaborate on this let me know.

I did a custom helvetica based theme for dejitaru above and want to do an iphone based version but requires to much view/html/php editing that I don't want to mess with.

(helvetica theme I created)

Raize · September 2010

dude that's a really nice theme, have you released it?

Raize · October 2010

Also, I'd be willing to pump some cash into an iPhone implementation of Vanilla if anyone is ever interested. my email is simon at raize dot ca

empirikal · October 2010

@Raize

I have not released it but I have considered. We're still beta testing/tweaking it. Maybe soon.

adriansonline · October 2010

This would be interesting for the iPhone ( as well as Android).
http://www.tapatalk.com/api/api.php

empirikal · October 2010

Too many people rely on 3rd party plugins already. Some simple css can do what they are doing and it's free.

I could style the forum as is for the iphone (and have), that's not the problem. It's not really even detection though having different HTML views served for a mobile device would be icing on the cake... (As it stands now, you detect using CSS viewport and basically using display/visibility tricks in the CSS to show/hide html markup that may or may not be needed for the mobile view)

My biggest complaint and it goes for 99% of the websites that have "mobile" versions is they never sit back and think about HOW the user is using the site/application on their mobile device. In general if you're using a forum on a mobile device you're looking for something specific (search) or want to be able to browse/post in a thread relatively easy. Things like profiles, activity, etc aren't needed. Also have you tried "logging" in using the iphone, the modal window is never in view when you click to sign in.

Anyways end rant.

adriansonline · October 2010

@empirikal the beauty of tapatalk is it has those included and would also help all Vanilla Forum owners to get more exposure. You are right though. Mobile versions are about getting information or searching. But from an admin perspective, it would be nice to be able to moderate the forum from an iPhone or another device. Current regular themes do not translate well. Has anyone succeeded in creating a fully functional iphone theme for this? Maybe I missed it? Or would someone be willing to share it in the addon directory :) If not its on my wishlist, so I can always create one, but really don't want to reinvent the wheel.

morepotatoes · October 2010

if someone is able to help me with the php to add a meta and link tag to the head. I can pretty quickly write an iphone stylesheet.

but I need some things added to the head before I can do anything.


<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width; initial-scale=1.0; maximum-scale=1.0; user-scalable=0;" />

and

<link media="only screen and (max-device-width: 480px)" href="/iphone.css" type= "text/css" rel="stylesheet" />

I know some php but am primarily a designer / front end dev and the themeing system in vanilla 2 is way too weird, convoluted and undocumented for me have half the time needed to figure it out. I do however, write iphone css often at my day job so making something for this should be pretty quick.

Lincoln · October 2010

Add meta tags to a page with a plugin:

$Sender->Head->AddTag('meta', array('name'=>'viewport', 'content' => 'width=device-width;'));
You could do that in a Base_Render_Before(&$Sender) function to apply the meta tag site-wide, or call it in a specific controller (e.g. DiscussionController_Render_Before) to do a page-by-page basis.

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[STYLING] IPhone stylesheet/theme

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