Board Thread:Support Requests - Designing Your Wiki/@comment-45592444-20200919012638/@comment-45117243-20200921192416

SapadorCastelo wrote: {| Mobile devices do not display the same main page, but a predefined, not so customizable layout. The main page you edit on desktop is for desktop only. And as Fandom wikis have an almost fixed width for desktop (something between 1000 and 1200 pixels on the main page, and ~700 to ~800 pixel on article pages), the use of tables is very suitable on the main page. That advice against tables you saw on the help page, is for article and category pages only, that are the only type affected by the mobile skin. The main page is not "affected" by the mobile skin, it displays a completely different thing, no matter how you edit it for desktop.

“ ''You can use wikitables to make order from chaos. Tables allow you for breaking up the main page into distinct sections, much like headings on a content page. Their borders also act as a visual guide, making main pages easy to use.''” — Help:Main page.

That said, there's still a "minor" limitation related to the main page width, that are the cases where the desktop browser has less than ~1080 pixels (due to use of zoom, browser window not maximized, etc.) There, the main page width falls from ~1000 to ~700 pixels, and becomes similar to article pages (without the side rail). And this "problem" is solved with the use of the main page column tags. On the wide column on the left you put all the tables you want, and the site won't touch them, not matter what device is used to view the page. I don't totally agree. Main pages have mobile skin as any article or blog page. It is just collapsed under the special mobile main page, and sometimes not even that - in case no one edited the special mobile main page.

Yet, in my opinion tables are a good layout for main page portals on both desktop and mobile skins. Unlike CSS-based layout which is totally ignored on mobile, table layout stands.

Here is a demonstration of a main page that do that (some parts are broken because it's a UCP sandbox wiki while the destination wiki is legacy): https://kotlcwikicodingteam.fandom.com/wiki/KotLC_Wiki_Coding_Team_Wiki?useskin=mercury

It's important to keep the table not too wide - usually no more than 2 columns and limited content width. On mobile, lines won't automatically break to fit the cells, but explicit line breaks still work.