Q: Why is Apple Support Communities website not iPhone responsive?

Here is what ASC looks like on my iphone 4 ios 7.1.2.

somehow the text get expanded when shown here. As you can see, Apple ignored the ridiculousness of the placing the title on the top of the screen.

You clearly haven't taken all of Robert's & Hiroto's CSSes for a spin... pretty doggone radical display of served up content.

It can indeed be done with User Agent discovery and appropriate CSSes invoked. Could have iPhone(all fones), iPad(all tablets) & computers pretty simply methinks

If a couple of users can get 'er done, I am pretty sure Apple could if they wanted to.

I totally agree with you.

R

I must admit to FULLY pinching the display before taking the shots (thought it that would go without saying, one must "season to taste")

It would be interesting to get AlohaBob to show us what iPad "default" looks like - and tell his seasoning tips for his palette.

A couple of comparative shots from Android - I have SMALL LG "Leon" model fone

Yes, as i said, they handle look and feel and very day glitches and issues.  But the HTML and general structure and functionality is still constructed and handled by Jive's software and I doubt the Apple Team set to support the ASC forums has any say in what HTML structure gets output at all.  They just style it to look more Apple like.

If jive sells a plug in to its own software, that means it's by design not meant to work with mobile device's on its own and this plugin probably alters the HTML being output by the forum engine so it can be used on mobile devices. Jive very likely does design its html so the plugin is absolutely required to get something that works on mobile screens.

Without the plug-in, the HTML output is designed for computer monitors, and is very very difficult to modify to get it to work correctly on mobile.

I'm a web developer by trade myself, and I have a hard time going through the CSS to get it to look even remotely usable in mobile screens.

Currently the HTML is so convoluted, its quite difficult to get anything to properly hide, and work in reduced spaced with CSS mods alone.

The css is worse. It looks like at one time there was a design, but the people maintaining it hacked it beyond recognition.

Hiroto knows css well and did a great job.  Here is how the combined css looks. [ you won't see the yellow and the light blue around the points,  that my latest adventure. ]

This is test reply from Android fone

Pinching on the iphone 4 small screen

-- text fades into the left margin.  ASC doesn't leave room on the left of the text.

-- text is too small for me to read for awhile.

A little bigger screen might help a lot.

ChitlinsCC could you try hiroto's changes.  You should not have to pinch the text.  Should adjust to screen size automatically.  This is a minimum screen size, but this could be adjusted.

R

So where does one get Hiroto's mods?

Hiroto's and my combined mods are here.

Adjust the format and layout of ASC Web Pages

The ASC software uses http://sass-lang.com/

to generate many of the css files.

R

OK. Let's not speculate, but rather look at the structure of the system - from server-side to client-side

• JiveSoftware recommends a server for each of 2 databases and the software application itself
  • Content database - everything about the structure with "message ID #" being the leaf on the tree
  • User database - everything about all users with UserID being the leaf on the tree
• When a Guest visits, no user DB comes into play. Logged in adds user prefs like "threaded" or "flat" view, what content is "followed", etc. from values stored in users record on the DB. A value can be a "list" of things. Any list can contain other lists. Complicated, but that's what computer DO.
• Jive serves up DATA to the Stylesheets called in every page's Page Source that is then DISPLAYED accordingly by "client-side computing" - Data + Stylesheet = what we see displayed
  

All that said, every website discovers User Agent as a function of the server software that merely runs the website - that is how plain old Apple.com pages knows what stylesheets to deliver to different devices - Apple.com displays "mobile version" for my Android as well.

The struck above is speculative... based on merely resizing windows may actually do the trick with some other function.

All that content on Apple.com & support.apple.com that looks so good on all devices is NOT hard coded versions. It is displaying Content DATA on the fly at delivery to the device - mobile or computer by the respective stylesheets as I describe.

Whatever is happening at Apple.com & support.apple.com is being displayed by the SIZE of the browser window display... Here is me faking an iPhone size display in Win10, FF 47.0.1 with User agent as iOS 9.2 (with a switcher - every developer's MUST HAVE)

Looks VERY much my experience on my Android LD Leon - this looks about like what I "apparently" see (eyeballing the actual size for posting here, since resolutions get all convoluted)

ASC Content DATA is no different. Apple has just chosen not to deal with the issue in the same way it has for its $$making "front end" content. Apple can choose to invoke anything it wants to... after all, it was able to dive deep into the inner workings of TinyMCE rich text editor to make it WYSIWYG with the displayed postings! No "Little Feat"

Let's hope this finally makes it onto the Punch List, never mind the priority it is given!

try Hiroto...

I believe I would need to craft it into a ready made style at userstyles.org

Gimme an hour to do and test (gotta see a man about a horse)

A link to the current code would be handy {apples to APPLES and all}

July 7 is latest "release", correct?

Thanks.

Yes.  July 7th is the latest release.

Here is how the july 7th looks.  Might be best to move aviator above how apple does now.

R