Disable WordPress responsiveness on big (desktop/laptop) screens?

  • Hagelslag

    (@hagelslag)


    8 years, 4 months ago

    [Note: What follows is a somewhat shorter version of a post I posted earlier, which was more long-winded than necessary, but couldn’t be edited anymore.]

    Hi all,

    I’ve noted that my site displays ‘responsive’ behaviour even on BIG screens (desktop/laptop screens), when you make the window smaller. I think this is unnecessary on big screens and doesn’t look good.

    What I would like instead, on the bigger screens, is simply for nothing like that to happen. If the window is made smaller, the part of the web page that’s still visible should stay exactly as it was in a full-size window. In other words, I want no elements moving around or getting smaller as you make the window smaller.

    I use a child theme, and fairly soon after beginning I’ve deleted all CSS, Javascript and PHP files from the parent theme. At first I suspected that the parent theme was also responsible for the unwanted responsiveness. Unfortunately, however, this ‘responsive’ behaviour is still taking place now that any influences from the parent theme have presumably been removed.

    Therefore I’d like to ask: Does anyone know how to stop/remove this responsiveness, at least on the BIG screens? Or is this behaviour built-in in WordPress? Before posting I’ve done an Internet search, but not really found an answer…

    Thanks for reading!
    Hagelslag.

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
  • Marios Alexandrou

    (@marios-alexandrou)

    8 years, 4 months ago

    Whether a site is responsive or not is controlled by the theme. So I’d look for theme settings you can modify. If the theme doesn’t have any settings, you will have to look at modifying the CSS to control the layout at certain screen sizes. What you describe doesn’t sound like it’s related to WordPress specifically or to any plugins.

    I’m sorry I can’t be more specific, but I thought I could at least give some guidance as to the type of work/effort that will be needed.

    Thread Starter Hagelslag

    (@hagelslag)

    8 years, 4 months ago

    Hi Marios,

    Thanks for your reply!

    However, I’m still in the dark as to what causes this behaviour. I’ve deleted ALL files in the parent theme, including those in its submaps. (With the exception of two files of unclear types called .DS_Store and .gitignore, for which I have no idea what they do, but assume they may be crucial for the correct functioning of the Database or something like that, and which I do not dare remove.)

    As for the child-theme, which I’ve built myself, it only consists of code I’ve written myself, and for which – as yet – I’ve not provided any responsiveness. In my code, I never distinguish based on window (or screen) size. The only code not written by myself is a few lines in function.php, namely:

    <?php add_action( ‘wp_enqueue_scripts’, ‘theme_enqueue_styles’ );
    function theme_enqueue_styles() {
    wp_enqueue_style( ‘parent-style’, get_template_directory_uri() . ‘/style.css’ );
    }
    function new_excerpt_length($length) {
    return 25;
    }
    add_filter(‘excerpt_length’, ‘new_excerpt_length’);

    And this also seems completely innocent in terms of responsiveness.

    I note that, actually, my main menu, which I have coded myself without the help of any plug-in, is one of the elements that displays unwanted responsiveness (it causes a bit of a mess really, as it breaks into several lines once the window becomes so small that the menu does not fit on one line anymore). Which suggests that plug-ins aren’t the culprits either.

    I also note, for what it’s worth, that EVERY WordPress web site that I’ve tested for it, seems to display this behaviour. I’m really wondering if it’s not built-in into WordPress itself, irrespective of the theme used. (Of course, I may well be wrong in this suspicion, but at the moment I simply do not see another explanation.)

    Thanks for reading.
    Hagelslag.

    Marios Alexandrou

    (@marios-alexandrou)

    8 years, 4 months ago

    So first off a couple of easy items… .DS_Store is a file that is specific to Apple OS X. And .gitignore is a file that is used by developers when they work with version control software called GIT. Neither should have any impact on anything WordPress related.

    As for your child theme, do note that it inherits all of the properties of the parent theme unless you’ve specifically overruled them with new code. So the less new code you write, the more your child theme will behave like the parent theme.

    Also, I’m now wondering if what you mean by responsiveness is different from what I mean. To me responsiveness means that the layout of the site adjusts, either by page elements moving and/or text size changing, to appear readable whether the user is on a small screen or big screen. Typically responsive designs have a minimum screen size they’ll work on and a maximum screen size after which the layout stops changing.

    So just to try and clarify, when you activate the default WordPress theme twentyfifteen do you see the behavior still?

    Lastly, which theme are you trying to use?

    Thread Starter Hagelslag

    (@hagelslag)

    8 years, 4 months ago

    Thanks again. I plan on replying tomorrow, when I should have the time. (I’m in Holland BTW, it’s about 16:45 here now.)

    Thread Starter Hagelslag

    (@hagelslag)

    8 years, 4 months ago

    Hi Marios,

    Well, as it turned out, I was in for a bit of a surprise this morning, as the unwanted behaviour stopped when I once and for all removed all files from the parent theme. I had done this before – or so I thought! – but at that time the behaviour hadn’t stopped, and later on I had put copies of some files back to the parent theme’s map (all this didn’t seem relevant, so I didn’t post about it to keep the post from becoming even longer).

    Bottom line seems to be that, exactly as you stated, the responsiveness WAS due to the parent theme.

    Incidentally, I think we mean precisely the same thing when speaking of ‘responsiveness’.

    The parent theme I used is called Naked WordPress (http://naked-wordpress.bckmn.com/). I chose it because I wanted to build my own site, not hindered by the presence of an intrusive theme. I use WordPress for its great back-end functionality, not for its themes, as I mostly know what the site I’m building should look like, and in my experience a parent theme hinders development (in the child theme) more than it helps. It’s more difficult to tweak an existing theme than to simply write all of the code yourself – once again, in my very personal experience. (Unless, of course, the theme gives you exactly want you want – but after trying dozens of free themes I still hadn’t found one that even came close. For blogs it may be a different story.)

    In this case, despite its name, Naked WordPress still caused me a lot of trouble (in particular, it interfered with my own styling in the child theme), and so fairly soon I decided to empty or delete its files. As I said, and for reasons I don’t quite remember, I put some of those back, and the result is known. Now I’ve deleted them once and for all. (For the record, I have kept empty files style.css and one template file, since WordPress started complaining about their absence in the parent theme.)

    Next time, I will not bother to download a parent theme at all. (When I started, I thought it was required; but if I understand correctly, I could simple create a new submap in the Themes map instead and work from there).

    So my problem is solved. Although of course now I’ll have to research how to make my site responsive when I actually want it to be, i.e. on smaller screens, and in the right way too. But that’s a whole different subject.

    Nonetheless, I’d like to ask one more general question if I may. Is it correct to think of a (parent) theme as no more than the set of viewable files in its designated map? Or is there more to a theme, like unaccessible files or settings hidden somewhere, that could still potentially interfere with my own code in the child theme?

    Thanks again!
    Hagelslag.

    Marios Alexandrou

    (@marios-alexandrou)

    8 years, 4 months ago

    I’m glad you figured out the problem!

    As for your general question about themes, the answer is yes and no. Some themes are lightweight and focus on the presentation of the site. Other themes add features and functions that are more typical of plugins. And still others sit in the middle of the spectrum and save settings to the database that affect how things are displayed. It’s all up to the theme developer to decide what his/her theme does. And that means you, as a user, can’t make assumptions about how a theme works just by a quick look.

    If a theme has a support forum, I recommend perusing it before settling on a theme so you can get a sense of the challenges people are encountering.

    Thread Starter Hagelslag

    (@hagelslag)

    8 years, 4 months ago

    Thanks!

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
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