iPhone theme

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callumacrae
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iPhone theme

Post by callumacrae »

First of all, I would like to apologise if I have posted this in the wrong place - http://wiki.phpbb.com/PhpBB4/RFC isn't working for me

Are there any plans for an iPhone theme for phpBB 4.0? I have only heard rumours.

I am currently building a MOD that displays an iPhone theme when the user accesses the board from an iPhone. It is still in (very) early stages, but you can see it at http://callum.x10hosting.com/ (I haven't done the icons or any of the PHP yet).

If there are plans for this then I would be interested in helping, or if there are no plans for this then I would either like to propose it or carry on building my MOD.

~Callum
Made by developers, for developers!
My blog

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EXreaction
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Re: iPhone theme

Post by EXreaction »

I can pretty much guarantee that you won't see an official interface included for one very specific client, especially not with how few people use it.

If something is built for mobile phones it will be designed for all mobile clients, not just the iPhone.

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callumacrae
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Re: iPhone theme

Post by callumacrae »

iPhones and iPod Touches both use the same browser - well over 45 million units have been sold. But yeah, I see your point :(

~Callum
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Nelsaidi
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Re: iPhone theme

Post by Nelsaidi »

Your totally forgetting Android - the major competitor to the iPhone; the market share of which will grow rapidly through out this year and next (but lets not debate this here, matter of personal opinion and a number of major manfuacturers embrasing android)

Also Symbian and Maemo are also used on popular high end nokia phones (aswell as sony erricson) - it should be supported by these.

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Raimon
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Re: iPhone theme

Post by Raimon »

If we support one or two devices I'm pretty sure you got a lot of complains of other users that are not using those devices/software, and sorry to say it I'm complete against that (based on one or two mobile devices), we don't have a Apple policy (see for example the Flash Story).
If a users don't like OK that is fair, but never refuse to support devices with software A where you support devices that have software B, C, D, E etc. to get my point.
If phpBB have mobile theme never and i recall never build it based of one OS like iPhone (safari) or Android , but make it so it will be "mobile" for all actual mobile devices (Windows, Apple, Google, LG, SE, Nokia etc. etc).
A mobile check to switch to a mobile style (and that phpBB *.* will include a mobile style) that will work on all devices would be the best option, and not a style that will work only for some devices.
Please see also this topic; viewtopic.php?f=75&t=32139

Nelsaidi
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Re: iPhone theme

Post by Nelsaidi »

I didnt imply that one operating system is what it should be targetted at, I used an example other than iPhone which has an equally large and growing market share (Android) - and specified Symbian and Maemo, other smartphone operating systems. Oh, and theres also Windows :/

I agree targetting iPhone is bad, a generic theme would be best (and the only viable solution) - but, then theres the question of optimum resolution, in which case 320 × 480 seems to be the standard. Being so it would seem to be optimised for larger screens, (to some extent, my phone is 800 x 480, there are others which are sub 300 pixels both h and v). Obviously it wouldnt be 'iPhone' styled but again a generic style, prosilverish perhaps?

Look at facebook, they have a Touch (for touchscreen/larger screen phones) and Mobile site (pretty much every mobile compatible) - The question is phpBB Mobile, under which will it fall? Bare in mind smartphone users may go for the full site, on my phone i rearely use mobile sites awlays the full site (inc facebook, despite the mediocre app and mobile sites).

you WILL compromised on features, but on what - what is absolutely neccessary and what is something thats nice but no space for, etc etc

Oleg
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Re: iPhone theme

Post by Oleg »

I don't entirely understand the opposition here.
callumacrae wrote:If there are plans for this then I would be interested in helping, or if there are no plans for this then I would either like to propose it or carry on building my MOD.
Sounds like OP is not asking others to do the work if they don't want to.

Those who object to an iphone theme, would you implement any mobile theme at all yourself, ever? If you don't plan on this then why prevent someone from working on it?

Currently there are no mobile themes for phpbb. An officially blessed theme has to work on 5 different phone platforms. Who do you think has access to 5 different phone platforms? Chances are if one person developed an iphone theme someone would then be able to modify it so that it works on android too, or develop an android theme based on iphone theme if the differences between devices are irreconcilable. Requiring one person to support all platforms in use guarantees that a mobile theme will never happen.

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DissentioN
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Re: iPhone theme

Post by DissentioN »

It shouldn't be too hard to do this as a mod I think.
  • In a file that is included/used on every phpBB page check once for the user-agent, if it's found, save it in the session (so it gets deleted when the user leaves the forum)
  • When you have the User-Agent, check the string if it contains 'iPhone' or check if it looks similar like this: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/1A543a Safari/419.3
    • If positive, change your css style to use css specifically for mobile webbrowsers
    • If negative, don't do anything with the css
List of Mobile webbrowser User-Agents:

Code: Select all

http://www.zytrax.com/tech/web/mobile_ids.html

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callumacrae
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Re: iPhone theme

Post by callumacrae »

The actual MOD supports multiple themes and mobiles - it just searches the user agent against stuff in an acp module and displays the corresponding style (again, set in ACP).

I have submitted the MOD, but I don't think it will be accepted, as mobile styles are not allowed in the style db.

This means that the MOD will not work, unless any of the following happen:
  • phpBB change their policies
  • It comes with phpBB by default
  • I get my own forum (like AutoMOD) - LOL, I think not (I only have 250 posts and there is absolutely no reason to trust me)

The reason I named this topic "iPhone theme" is because I can only develop the theme for iPhone.

~Callum
Made by developers, for developers!
My blog

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onehundredandtwo
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Re: iPhone theme

Post by onehundredandtwo »

CSS3 makes support for smaller resolutions much easier.
http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/HTML5 ... fault.html

The only issue with this is limited CSS3 support. AFAIK it would be possible to design a style that includes these CSS3 features, but still works without them.
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