Wedge

I disagree, they majority of mobile devices can handle much more data and bandwidth and 4G rolling out on most networks this year it will only get better.

You should have the same if not most functionality on your mobile these days.

If you're talking about some of the countries lagging behind in mobile speeds i would suggst another bare theme for 'slow wireless'.

Why?

From my experience it's what the customer wantsand the users expect.

Out of the many projects i've worked on 99% of the time the client has said the mobile version should have most if not ll publicaly available functionality.

And in uat the users have expected said public functonality.

That doesn't answer my question.

Why?

Let me explain where I'm coming from. I *can* should I ever need to, administrate my VPS from my mobile phone. The fact is, doing so is an utter pain in the backside. Even from iPad, it's not particularly clever, and as a result I won't unless I absolutely have to.

I feel much the same about sites on mobile. Yes, I 'could' have the full fat version, but it's really not actually that clever an idea, no matter how much it's what the users 'want' or 'expect'.

It's never about content. It's about functionality and usability. It's not easy to browse sites on mobile devices, and that's the main problem a mobile theme should solve. Merely removing content doesn't help anyone. Giving important things a higher priority does (and in the process one looses some content and things that one just wouldn't use on a phone). A mobile site doesn't really save bandwidth (my theme actually takes more bandwidth on an initial page load), but should make browsing and viewing content easier.

I don't mean for full admin/moderate functionality but full 'normal' user functionality should be available and it possible kept as similar as the standard theme. I agree that admin functionality shouldn't be fully available on mobile but maybe basic moderate tasks should to remove or flag something until you get to your pc to deal with it etc.

Most users would never know the "features" I mentioned are gone. However with that stuff gone links and text and important things can be bigger. Which makes the site easier to navigate and more useable on a mobile phone. As for speed, who cares about 4g at the end of the day if most use their data plan up guess what? They are throttled. So to me saving bandwidth is important. I hate our prices what the Europeans have to pay is depressing.Initial page load can be heavier in your case because every following page is lighter because it is very careful what it brings to the screen.

Yup, on my 3G (not even 4G) plan, it's metered in terms of 250MB blocks and it's as slow as sin here.

I still do not understand the mentality of putting as much functionality on a tiny screen, because it just does not make sense.

On a desktop where you have a viewport of 1000x800 or larger, go nuts. Make use of that real estate. But remember that that 1000x800 or larger real estate is on a screen probably at least 14" in size if not larger.

Trying to fit 'as much as possible' onto a 4-5" screen is insane. Even fitting into a 10" screen can be frustrating.

Just a few comments...

- Tablets use Weaving by default, anyway. If you end up being served Wireless on a tablet, please tell me the name of your tablet, and I'll fix it.
- While it's technically possible to have a regular Wireless and a bandwidth-conscious Wireless, it'd be a mess to implement. What Wireless does is test SKIN_MOBILE inside the Weaving templates (it's set to 1 in Wireless, and 0 in other skins), and redo the templates based on this -- such as, using only one column for some tables along with simple line breaks, instead of multiple columns, so that it renders more naturally in a horizontally-challenged device; so, yes, it removes some HTML here and there, but it doesn't remove any features. Doing that would beat its purpose, which is to make a responsive skin with the same amount of features as the others. In order to make an extra level of bandwidth consciousness, I'd have to add some new constant, like SKIN_MOBILE_DATA or SKIN_MOBILE_NOWIFI, and do even more tests in the template for this. It's doable, once again, but it just feels overcomplicated, and I don't really imagine other themers using that. Of course, considering that my plan is to entice people into doing skins rather than full-fledged themes, it might still be possible to do it.
- I can't determine your current bandwidth, except vaguely with JavaScript, meaning I can't redirect you to some skin or the other based on your bandwidth in a very predictable manner. This means that you'd have to manually select the bandwidth-optimized version, and it doesn't feel very natural. Wedge is cool in that it automatically presents you either the desktop, or the mobile version, for your comfort. (e.g. if you're a guest visiting a forum for the first time, you're more likely to stay on it if it's adapted to your current device.)

I just don't feel like removing so many stuff "by default" without requiring an extra effort from the user, and I don't see much of a point in trimming down our HTML when it's already much, MUCH lighter than any competitor's equivalent HTML.

The only thing I can realistically do, is ensure that mobile devices have a good-looking skin for them, and even that isn't always easy to do.

Why is this necessary? I'm presuming the entire admin panel is considered 'not a target' for responsive?

Yes but it's good to have it if you don't have a PC around and need to apply something asap...

I am not spending any effort whatsoever on making the admin panel work in a responsive setup. For most pages that would require completely redesigning the admin panel.

Wouldn't expect anyone to!

But that's where I see a problem. People go on about how 'responsive' needs to 'support all features' except that what we're really talking about is all 'user side' features and maybe some 'moderator side' features'.