@sridharan.s thanks for the ideas. I actually got helped out by @duke.severn on this subject.
The key was to have a group that contains a repeating group, and other elements as seen in the element tree below.
The “main group” ( in my example : Group Favorite Gifts ) has the following setting to make sure it can be expanded.
I set mine to max width 800% so that the repeating group would expand to many different columns when the page is stretched.
Then the repeating group inside must be set up to have an ext vertical scroll and have selected allow more than one column when stretched.
This enables you to work with just one cell as your repeating group on the editor page.
The other necessary detail is in the responsive editor to have collapse margins when width is a certain amount as seen below
Your repeating group has a similar set up, although it doesn’t apply a max width:
Other elements inside the repeating group should be set to fixed width so when page is stretched the cells remain the same…I suppose people could choose to set a max width to allow some expansion. All the numbers could be played around with to change how many columns are shown, or where on the page the elements are set etc.
In regards to the sticky footer, having a regular group at the bottom of the page is fine. The benefits of this allow the page in editor to be relatively short and on page load the elements inside the repeating groups will push the page down and keeping the group on the bottom of the page.
I have posted this editor for people to see a basic version ( make sure to scroll to bottom of index page )
I know this makes my development process a lot quicker and easier for any page requiring responsive repeating groups.
I was also able to implement a pagination onto this method as well.
Basically create pagination as normally would. Set the data source of repeating group to show numbers from:until:
Then just use some basic arithmetic and custom states to set up the equation needed to set the From Until items…in my example my custom states are on my page called search results and the custom state is labeled Pagination Items Until as well as Pagination Items From
There are quite a few more custom states required for the equation but basically need to decide on a number of results per page ( this is a place you could use a selector for the user to choose what number of results per page to display; this is because you need this number as a custom state to do the math, so it could be selected on page ).
Once you have number of results ( say 30 )
Assume first page is 1-30 ; page two is 31-60 etc…
the math to figure the results from number is
[(page number - 1) * results per page) + 1
Your number for results until is the same as number of results per page ( this is because how the function built in bubble does the range: the results from is the beginning number and the results until should be the total number added to get to final — originally I set it thinking to be the last number of the range so 60 or 90 or 120; but it needs to remain a constant equal to your results per page.)
Set a custom state for each portion of the equation as needed to complete it…point your data source of repeating group to the above and it will allow you to set up your pagination functions.
I finally have a fully responsive repeating group with pagination set dynamically by user to display the desired number of results per page…Also can set up different displays in the repeating group if want an ad in the mix.