TOPIC:

This came up for discussion in TLI training this morning; the Toastmasters International site is mobile friendly and responsive. Our District site is decidedly NOT (not only is it not responsive, but buttons with drop-down menus simply do not function properly at all, and disappear before a choice can be made). FTH was mentioned and recommended, but some clubs balked specifically because it is not responsive and easily accessed via mobile device. I agree that it would be helpful if it were. The most recent discussion I saw here was from six months ago, saying it was "doable," but might mess up user content. I think users should be responsible for their content, and that includes updating it to work - given some guidance on how to accomplish that - and assuming we're talking about things as trivial as reformatting a few graphics.

Is an update in the works to make FTH responsive?

It is in the plans, but it is much harder than I think most people really understand. I am essentially going to have to re-architect the entire FTH user interface, probably with an entirely new user interface library. The jQuery UI library that we have been using since the beginning of FTH 2.0 is not a responsive UI library.

This is my dilemma, unfortunately.

I see. Your response at support.toastmastersclubs.org/4-general-...ady-fth-update#57229 made it appear trivial from your end, and I inferred that it would then be a matter of users resizing graphics and reformatting text appropriately. I like FTH a lot (exactly as you said, as a CMS - and if nothing else, for the agendas and mailing lists!) but the lack of responsive design and UI is why people are moving to platforms like Wordpress, instead. (My own site's basically Wordpress - I love it, but won't be ditching FTH for it any time soon. :D Just wish FTH worked better on everyone's mobile devices. It does work better already than our district site, so there's that!)

Thanks, SteveTheTechie.

Well, "doable" does not mean simple or easy.

I still stand by that post... it is doable. However, it is going to take some time.

In many respects, I have already started the process... any new dialogs I create are tested with varying widths to ensure the controls are positioned properly for smaller screen widths.

However, it is the existing stuff and how to handle user content that are the problems. Also, I do not agree with you that I should just let users fend for themselves on adjusting their content. Many users would reject that approach.

What I probably need is a team of users to try to determine where the problem areas are. The reason for that is that I simply do not have access to the full range of devices to test and find problems. A team of users that did would be very beneficial.

Let me know if I can be of help in testing.

I have a Samsung Galaxy Note 5 and can probably recruit a few willing helpers (or borrow their devices for quick tests).

Another thought (and this may not be easy or even doable) - have an option, as Google+ and others have done - to "test drive" the existing site with the new interface before committing to it. Make it possible to switch between the two, so that if it "breaks" anything, it can be fixed at leisure, not truly broken.

hollyjahangiri wrote:

Let me know if I can be of help in testing.

I have a Samsung Galaxy Note 5 and can probably recruit a few willing helpers (or borrow their devices for quick tests).

That would be great. What I need is a running list of specific problem areas, the device type/name, and what if any specific actions prompted the problem on smaller screen. The more specifics, the better.

We could do something on a Google doc sheet to allow sharing information.

My only concern is building anticipation of a quick resolution when my current focus is the agenda module updates.