We've started work on a major new upgrade for Hoop.la, UBB Forum, and QuestionShark that will make all pages completely "responsive".  If you are not familiar with the term "Responsive Design", here are some resources for you:

What The Heck Is Responsive Design?

How Important Is Responsive Design

In a nutshell, it means that the user interface automatically adapts to fit any size of device.  It also means a much better user experience.

This is becoming increasingly critical as we see the continuing evolution of smart devices.  Phones are getting bigger; there are constantly new styles and types of tablets; and then you have hybrid devices that combine tablets with a desktop experience.  People want to access content in lots of different ways and so our platform needs to be able to automatically adjust, to be future-proof, if you will.

Currently, we have a "mobile" interface that is automatically accessed by anyone using a mobile browser.  But having one mobile interface is problematic because even among mobile browsers there are vastly different screen sizes and resolutions.  The mobile interface provides a decent experience with more focused choices for users, but it is also very limiting because many features are missing in the effort to keep things simple for the smaller screens sizes. 

By switching to a truly responsive approach, however,  we can design our interfaces one way and have them adjust automatically depending on the screen size, without any loss of features as you scale down to smaller screens.  Thus, there will no longer be a separate "mobile" interface at all when we roll this out. Ultimately, this will also lead to faster development of new features in the future, as well.

We actually made our product websites for Hoop.la, UBB Forum, and QuestionShark responsive last fall, but it is a much bigger undertaking to convert entire applications like ours... and that is why this will be one of our most ambitious (time-consuming) software releases.  

We're literally going to have to redo every page in the system.  The underlying HTML will be different.  The theme editor you have now will be much different. We will have all new CSS.  This means that when this change happens, you'll need to create a new theme and new custom CSS (if you use custom CSS).  But, fear not, we'll give you plenty of time to make such changes via a staging area that we will make available to everyone prior to actually doing the upgrade. And we'll also be here to assist you as much as possible as you get your site ready for the transition.

Our themes and underlying CSS will be cleaner, easier to understand, and more flexible. And your community site will of course look AWESOME no matter how your community members are accessing your site.

All of this is said now to warn you that our software update cycle will be a little different for the next 3-4 months. Usually we try to do at least one major release per month. But we can't follow that model while we work on this. Things will seem a little quieter, but rest assured something big is on the way and we're confident it will result in a MUCH better experience for everyone when we are done.

We'll provide updates as we can, but please note that we likely not provide a firm delivery date until we get very close to the end of the project.  April/May is the current expected timeframe, but that could change. 

Stay tuned for more!