Also relevant is T196213: Set mobile breakpoint smaller for responsive MonoBook

There's no way to actually tailor monobook to tablets without either going full mobile (big smacky buttons for smacking) or just giving up entirely and using desktop because desktop/laptops use these resolutions too.

Unless we want to do device sniffing or something. But even then a lot of people probably do want the normal mode if it fits anyway, if they're using this at all.

I don't think "big smacky buttons for smacking" is a big issue for a tablet, especially if there's going to be a proper opt-out per T195625#4254813
Just playing around with the browser inspector, I got the following layout mostly with just CSS changes:

margin: 0 15%;
width: 70%;

Second row tabs (li#ca-nstab-main-mobile a, etc)

background-image: none;
text-indent: 0;
width: initial;

Navigation and user menu tabs (a#sidebar-toggle and a#p-personal-toggle

background-image: none;
text-indent: 0;
padding: 0.75em 1em;
width: initial;

• Added text "navigation" and "user tools" (would need to be hidden in mobile view using the text-indent strategy)

It could perhaps do with some fine-tuning, but that's a basic tablet view without too much effort.

Nice.

Yeah, I'm sold. We should totally do that.

Change 441362 had a related patch set uploaded (by Evad37; owner: Evad37):
[mediawiki/skins/MonoBook@master] Add a tablet view for resposnive MonoBook

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/441362

Okay, so as it is right now, some comparison pictures:

Current icon mode layout before change (around widest end):

New icon mode at previous widest end (broken echo icons)

New icon mode a bit bigger (different broken echo icons)

New wide end of icon mode (echo icons completely disappear):

Around widest end of text/tablet mode (no echo icons):

From the latest patchset:

Mobile:

Tablet: