Forum
Responsive control panel (or lack thereof)
I have a client who's website is in need of a freshen up and rebuild. It's a fairly enormous site so i was planning on using it to get into Perch Runway (built a few sites on Perch in the past so i'm keen to tinker with the new beast!)
Anyway, after test installing it locally I've come across a quite puzzling show stopper! The control panel interface absolutely falls to bits on mobile (Android - Galaxy Note 3 and iOS iPhone 5) to the point of being completely unusable.
My client is always travelling and so a good 80% of the time he updates his site from his phone (currently using wordpress) so whatever i build for him absolutely must be mobile friendly.
It seems a strange oversight. I did notice that the perch website itself is a bit messed up on my phone too...
So i'm wondering if it is just a glitch / bug in the latest release? And if not, are there plans to make it usable on a mobile device any time soon?
Is there a specific problem you're hitting up against? We don't have specific narrow-width layouts, but the content should reflow and be editable.
Our website is brand new this week, so if you're seeing issues with that I'd be really surprised.
I have taken some screenshots for you to illustrate the problem(s).
On the login page, it looks like you don't have a viewport suitable for mobile, so i get a squished and rather tiny login box and logo: https://absolutecreations.co.uk/perch/login.jpg
Upon logging in, this is what i'm presented with: https://absolutecreations.co.uk/perch/pages-view.jpg
And then if i go to the Users section (The link for which is almost entirely obscured) it gets worse: https://absolutecreations.co.uk/perch/users-view.jpg
Yeah i saw your site is brand new (i'm a regular visitor!) but it is indeed a bit wonky on my phone. It's only slight things but it's not unfixable stuff, just looks like it was overlooked. I've made some screenshots for these too!
The search box messes the header up: https://absolutecreations.co.uk/perch/home-page-1.jpg
And a long button makes the page scroll horizontally: https://absolutecreations.co.uk/perch/home-page-2.jpg
Same on the Perch page (though it looks like its the perch logo graphic breaking this one): https://absolutecreations.co.uk/perch/perch-page.jpg
That very much looks like a case of an old browser rather than anything else. Compare:
Login: https://cl.ly/image/1N1B1d1w1C16
Page list: https://cl.ly/image/002X1z0N3w3u
Blog post list: https://cl.ly/image/0U0E3e33381Q
Perch website: https://cl.ly/image/382M2v3X0L3Z
Product page: https://cl.ly/image/0x1G2Y0y341C
Undoubtably there are improvements we can make! The Perch UI predates RWD, so what's there has been retrofitted, and while the UI caters well for tablet-sized devices, there's never been any real demand for editing from phones. I guess some people might like to work that way, but they're in the minority, and as such my time gets prioritised in other places.
See now your screenshots look perfect! Exactly what i wanted it to look like in fact.
But... i'm running the most up to date version of iOS8 on a not exactly old device (iPhone 5) and, well you saw what mine looks like! If i try it in the latest Chrome, in mobile testing mode it also is a mess for me (even using the iPhone 6 size).
Its slightly frustrating and i cant figure out why it would look SO different, considering the browsers i have viewed it in are absolutely up to date.
And well yeah, i understand why you would allocate your time that way. And based on your screenshots, it is perfectly usable for mobiles... if it were to look like that! But i'm unable to get it to look that way.
My screenshots are from my current working copy (2.8.5dev) so it's possible something's gone wonky in an earlier build. What are you on? 2.8.4?
Fair point! Yep i'm on 2.8.4
Ok, thanks, I'll see what I can find out.
Thanks Drew, much appreciated :^)
I see the same problems as above.
Running iOS 8.2.0 on a iPhone 5s.