Depending on who you listen to the internet is now accessed mostly on smartphones or it very soon will be. With that in mind, are there any plans for mobile friendly or responsive templates or even a 68C app?
Although I can not speak for 68 Classifieds themselves, I can say that I do not see a way that an app would be possible. An app is specific to a service and as each 68 Classifieds installation is different (e.g. categories, options, extra fields, etc..) not to mention at it's own domain. Now a template is a completely different story and I agree that having at least a separate stylesheet specific to mobiles would certainly be a welcome feature. One of the biggest challenges in doing that though is the just the fact that with the wide array of mobile devices and screen sizes. Mobile phones themselves vary greatly (Apple's iPhone, the most popular has a retina display with extremely high resolution). Then you get to the tablets with physical screen sizes from 7" all the way to almost 11" and not only with a very wide array of screen resolution, but again with greatly varying pixel densities. As this mobile world is still in it's infancy, there is no set standard and if you look at developing for mobile (in just web design only), you will see just how disparate the industry is. Just looking at html5 implementation which is supported much more widely in the mobile space doesn't even have "same support" on the same browser between the mobile to the desktop. Something developed right now, may be completely broken in as little as 6 months.
Hi Mike. I recently built a site using Wordpress and was very impressed by the responsive nature of the theme I used, in fact the theme is called 'Responsive' (see here). Clean and minimal, I couldn't help thinking at the time how well this would suit 68C. I tested it on the iPad, a Samsung Galaxy S2 (Android) and PC (but not Mac) - it looked and performed flawlessly across the board. Visually quiet, the user is drawn to the content where we want his attention to be. I definitely think this is the way to go. Michael
I took a look at that WP theme and it appears that building a similar theme around 68C would be pretty straight forward. You should give it a go...and let us know how things work out for you.
Michael, I took a look at the theme and I like it too (Not installed, just the screenshot which is just the home page). I was surprised that they are only using one "blueprint" based css file. Which is huge for a stylesheet (50K). I don't actually use any mobile devices myself (I know, surprise surprise ), it seems that they must be doing all the "refitting" with the modernizr javascript that they implemented (three of them). Of course one of the first things that I took a look at was what format type they were using for their images (mostly .png) as that in of itself is one of the biggest discussions going for mobile web (and apps too) due to the higher pixel density screens offered by Apple's iPhone, the NEW iPad and now their latest MacBook Pro with Retina Display. Curious if you are using the new iPad with the retina display. Many are saying that the png/gif/jpg image files look pixelated or blurry on the high density displays for web images and apps. I couldn't say, because again I don't have nor have I used these devices. I've actually been working on a more modern template for 68 for a while now and was hoping to at least attempt to be able to offer a mobile version as well. It's been on the back burner for a while though as it hasn't been much of a priority.
