A couple of notes on a few tools for mobile development.
http://quirktools.com/screenfly – this is a great tool. make sure to be aware of the “proxy” setting if you’re having trouble navigating your site.
http://responsivepx.com – Really nice tester with a slider for easy adjustment of length and width of the site.
Getting started is sometimes the hardest part.
For testing mobile design, you can simply resize your browser to see how the media queries are responding. literally drag the window and make it more narrow – height doesn’t matter.
I have an AT Core subtheme that I have customized. Using a subtheme is important so the core can be updated without wrecking your customizations. Make your first change in the file –
responsive.smartphone.portrait.css – if you have subthemed correctly, this will be in the css folder of your subtheme.
in my case, I changed the font size to something goofy – 212% using the wonderful apatana studio. I save changes, resize the browser window and watch the font expand to the new size. It doesn’t look good; that isn’t the point. All I have shown is where specifically to make the change and test the change you have made.
wide browser screen – desktop settings
Mobile settings with narrow browser. Note the now ginormous font!
I’m working with the responsive design side of Drupal now to prepare my site for mobile devices. Drupal utilizes responsive design at the theme level. This is the reason that I chose Adaptive Themes (AT) Core – it’s responsive out of the box. But there are still many considerations for approaching mobile devices.
This post will be a collection of links that I find useful for responsive design in the context of Drupal generally and AT specifically, starting with the wonderful readme by Jeff Burnz.
http://zomigi.com/blog/essential-considerations-for-crafting-quality-media-queries/#mq-overlap-stack – great blog on media queries and stacked v overlapping.
http://getlevelten.com/blog/tom-nelson/three-ways-use-media-queries-drupal – Excellenrt blog specifically about Media Queries and Drupal.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyIOj7fUZ7w – great vid from Lynda.
this is the readme from jeff burnz. I can’t attach .txt – WP doesn’t like that so here is the full text.
First read this about SASS, its very important!
———————————————–
There is more information regarding working with SASS in the SASS CSS folder
_README, however, you need to be aware that if you set Compass to watch the
SASS folder or any SCSS file in this theme it will OVERWRITE the CSS file/s in
your sub-themes CSS directory!
To prevent this ever happening you can delete the config.rb file in the
sub-theme root (unless you are actually planning on using SASS, in which case
you will want to keep it).
Working with Responsive Design in Adaptivetheme
———————————————–
The subtheme is designed to be “mobile first”. In short this means to
first load a set of global styles, the progressively add styles for larger
devices using media queries.
Its important to note that you do not have to follow a mobile first approach.
Adaptivetheme can support Desktop first approach as well, which means you will
progressively add styles to override things for mobile, rather than progressively
adding style for larger devices.
You can do both in Adaptivetheme – it’s merely a matter of where you place
the majority of your styles, and what theme settings you choose in the
Appearance settings for your sub-theme.
Lets examine the CSS file structure of Adaptivetheme and look at how each
file is loaded. From this you will be able to deduce what approach might work
for you, and where you should be placing your CSS.
Moible First or Desktop First – that is the Question!
———————————————–
Depending on your approach AT will load the stylesheets in a different order,
indeed it will load different stylesheets. You MUST make a conscious decision
which to use and set this in theme settings.
Look under CSS settings. By default AT is set to Mobile first, if you want to do
Desktop first you should change this setting.
Global Styles
————-
The global styles do not target any specific device – they always load for all
devices.
There are two main global stylesheets:
– global.base.css
– global.styles.css
global.base.css – this holds a few imoportant declarations that should probably
not be removed, however you can modify them, such as gutter width and flexibile
image/media styles.
global.styles.css – includes a slighly modified normalize reset and many empty
selectors for elements and drupal classes and id’s. If you prefer you can delete
everything in global.styles.css and start with a clean slate.
The selectors are extensive and you should delete unused selectors before
going live to reduce CSS weight. You can use cleancss.com or a better way is
just use SASS, it does this for you.
Each file includes a lot of comments and documentation, please review each of
the global CSS files for more help.
If you are doing mobile first then you will probably keep things to a minimum
in these files. “Minimum” is relative, this might still be a lot of CSS,
never-the-less its worth keeping in mind the mobile view of the site, and
avoid writing CSS rules that are clearly for larger width devices.
Responsive Styles
—————–
Adaptivetheme 7.x-3.x has two “modes” – Development mode and Production mode.
Depending on what mode you are in the stylesheets will load differently.
Mode changes automatically depending on CSS aggregation settings. When CSS
aggregation is ON, the its in Production mode.
If you don’t know what CSS aggregation is, look here:
~/admin/config/development/performance
## Responsive Styles – Development mode
In Development mode (CSS aggregation OFF) the responsive stylesheets will load
in individual link elements with the media query in media attribute.
This allows them to load directly into the browser and you will see your CSS
changes immediately, as per normal CSS development.
There are five of these responsive stylesheets – one for each break point set
in the theme settings:
– responsive.smartphone.landscape.css
– responsive.smartphone.portrait.css
– responsive.tablet.landscape.css
– responsive.tablet.portrait.css
– responsive.desktop.css
Its important to know that these files DO NOT contain the media queries,
instead they load in the <link> elements media attribute – remember, these
files only load when in Development Mode.
## Responsive Styles – Production mode
When in production mode all the responsive stylesheets are aggregated into one
file and use embedded @media queries. AT Core will automatically aggregate
the CSS from each of the development mode stylesheets and wrap it in the right
media query. This reduces the number of HTTP requests from 5 to 1.
This file is always called:
– ThemeName.responsive.styles.css
You will find this file at:
~/[public files]/adaptivetheme/[ThemeName]/ThemeName.responsive.styles.css
NOTE: please see the section below titled “Relative Paths in Responsive Styles”.
## Important Note about CSS Aggregation and Responsive Stylesheets
Once you have CSS aggregation ON if you make changes to any responsive
stylesheet, you MUST re-save the theme settings AND clear the sites cache. AT
Core will re-write the saved files, then clearing the cache tells Drupal to
use the new file.
## Relative Paths in Responsive Stylesheets
When CSS aggregation is ON AT Core will load the production version of your
responsive styles (see above “Production mode”). this file is loading from
Public Files and not from within your theme so special handling is required for
relative assets – AT Core will do this for you.
AT Core will automatically re-write the relative paths to the files so they
are relative to the site root. This is the same functionality as Drupal core
CSS aggregation feature, so paths are not broken.
If you use absolute paths these will not be altered.
Overlapping/Custom Media queries
——————————–
By default the media queries in Adaptivetheme are “stacked”, meaning they do
not overlap. This makes it very easy to target one set of device width and not
have those styles “leak” over into others. However it can also mean you may
need to duplicate CSS that you would rather have cascade.
To use custom media queries the sub-theme includes a special file called:
responsive.custom.css
To enable the use of this file in your theme see your theme settings:
Layout & General Settings > CSS > Custom Media Queries
This file has embedded media queries which means you MUST set them yourself.
Defaults are provided.
Allowing styles to cascade can result in a huge saving on total CSS weight and
speed up development.
Internet Explorer Styles and Scripts
————————————
AT can load conditional stylsheets and scripts from you sub-themes info file.
Please see adaptivetheme_subtheme.info – there are good docs and examples of
how to declare stylesheets and scripts for Internet Explorer.
Adaptivetheme also includes special conditional classes on the HTML element
which allow you to easily target styles at specific version of IE.
These are the classes you can use:
.iem7 (IE7 Mobile)
.lt-ie7 (less than IE7)
.lt-ie8 (less than IE8)
.lt-ie9 (less than IE9)
Use these if you only have a small number of overrides and do not want to load
a dedicated conditional stylesheet.
Support
——-
Ping me on Skype if you have life/death critical issues to report…
Skype: jmburnz
Otherwise support my work by joining my theme club, it really does fund my
contrib projects:
Or, you could get radical and file a support issue, even post a patch (which
makes me very happy):
Well, I don’t really know why I didn’t make this work better quite a while ago. If you need flexibility in your page layouts and you use a lot of Views, then I believe that this is the way to go. Use Panels for the overall layout and then plug in smaller bits of content within the Panel locations using Minipanels. I tried using them before and I think that I simply made a couple of mistakes in implementing them. But now that I know a little more than I did before, I have used them successfully and their implementation is going to be a real Godsend to me.
Here is a little image of what you can do. The layout here is a standard AT_Core layout that I have subthemed. I used Minipanels to add the smaller black boxes in the layout. Now I can have two elements at the very top of the page without having to use so much CSS that I run into other problems later, especially when I view the site on a mobile device. And the page is all Panels so there is a lot of consistency. The only issue is that I have to edit the Minipanel separately from the rest of the panel page.
well, it is time that i started customizing my theme. i knew that i would want to do this myself so i put some thought into my theme choice before I started. and I decided to with adaptive themes core.
If you want to see how your site will appear on a mobile device, check this site out. you can set it to emulate several models of smartphones (iphone, galaxy, blackberry). Really good site.
I have worked with Panels so much today that i want to throw up. But I feel like I am finally making progress. Even though I almost had to roll back my sandbox to a backup.
Panels are good. They allow you to have an easier time with layouts. But they can be tricky. You have to have a theme enabled that will support it properly. Especially if you are looking to have a responsive theme for Mobile devices.
I had an issue with the Panels Everywhere module and the Advanced Forum theme. That has been cleared up for the most part. By that I mean that I am not going to be using Panels Everywhere. Although, the issue really was the default theme template for PE and the AF module. You can have the mods installed and enabled together but when I enable the default template for PE, AF give you an error that doesn’t clearly implicate PE. It was only through A LOT of T&E that I figured that out. I had great help from the AF guy at Drupal.org but it really wasn’t his issue. But, I have gotten around the impasse.
So, here is where I am on this particular subject”
now I have the detail that i wanted to have on the front page. This part was tricky and I thought a few times about throwing the whole thing out and going with Joomla. But, I persevered….
Today I’m going to begin working (again) with the CSS stuff in my sandbox. My environments are all consistent right now (I spent some time over the weekend making sure enabled/installed modules are mirrored and patch levels are the same). It’s amazing how quickly your environments can cease to mirror each other if you’re aren’t meticulous about it.
My prod site is in an OK shape. But there is a lot of work to be done.
I have changed my sandbox over to the Omega theme. Did a little tweaking and enabled it on Prod. It’s time to get back into working with the CSS stuff. Omega has a good rep as a responsive theme, meaning it uses media queries to determine screen width. This is how the theme knows whether you are on a mobile device or not.
landie.tech 