We launched our new Customer Portal back in April and have had great customer feedback about it. There was however one issue which we were aware of, which a thoughtful customer recently reminded us of: the interface didn’t work on iOS devices.
Actually it didn’t work well with mobile devices in general. Our initial plan was to introduce a mobile-friendly version, but we like to be on the cutting edge of technology and having a separate mobile version of a site is so last year!
Thankfully Bootstrap 3.0 was just released and is now fully responsive by default. This means sites built using the Bootstrap framework will automatically rearrange themselves to best fit the display in use. For example the main dashboard in our Customer Portal is a grid on a normal display, but turns into a list when viewed on a narrow display such as a mobile phone. You can see this in action by logging in to our customer portal on your iPad oriented vertically, then turning it horizontally.
Grids, tables, navigation menus and forms are all responsive now.
Upgrading was not a trivial task as a lot has changed between Bootstrap 2 and 3, but we think the result was worth it. Now our portal not only works but works beautifully on desktops, tablets and mobile devices!