You are hereForums / General Discussion / Site topics / Mobile access?

Mobile access?


philberesford's picture

By philberesford - Posted on 17 April 2010

Hey Rob
I prolly spend 70%+ of my NoBMoB access via my iPhone. Problem is though is the site isn't very mobile friendly. Any plan to support mobile access? Is it a simple CSS switch? I don't really know much about Drupal.

Got any mobile browser stats for the site?

Cheers
Phil

EDIT: When I say unfriendly, im mainly refering more to the fixed width nature of the comments form field. Tis a tad on the wide side.

Rob's picture

See here: http://nobmob.com/node/12269

Will you lot just get with the programme and use a decent mobile device/browser? Sticking out tongue Eye-wink <T.I.C>

GAZZA's picture

get a Nokia n97 or an Iphone!
i have no probs browsing nobmob when sat on the toilet at work!

philberesford's picture

GAZZA I'm on an iPhone, it's just I'm getting spoilt now by how all my favourite sites are now optimizing for it. I was kinda hoping there's a Drupal plugin Rob could implement? Rob?

Rob's picture

There is a basic mobile theme, and a module that does it's best to detect when you're on a mobile device that we could play with, but...

... these are not ideal, and there's bound to be someone (like GAZZA) who thinks it works just fine on their mobile device so wouldn't like that.

Mobile devices are getting better all the time so I'm not sure there's a real advantage in trying to optimise for one or the other anyway. As a side issue - I'm of the philosophy that devices should cater for standards, and sites shouldn't try and pander to the idiosyncrasies of specific devices or software. We (people of the internet) are only just getting over the mess that IE6 introduced by having it's own little issues, let's not have that all over again with the iPhoney, eh?

philberesford's picture

Yeah but... IE was never standards compliant.
AFAIK Safari and now Opera on iPhone are. But to expect a big screen experience to translate directly to a mobile/small screen experience is a Holy Grail but without some form of custom CSS is sadly too much to wish for. It's a request I get regularly from clients on every job.

Dicko's picture

Phil

get an ipad Eye-wink that will fix your scrolling issues.

D

philberesford's picture

I played with one yesterday… damn that is one sexy piece of kit!

daveh's picture

I was always of the opinion that websites shouldn't have to cater for different devices but I now realise that this was probably because I was using a crappy Windows Mobile 6.1 device and doing lots of stuff was just plain painful! Since getting a new Android phone last week and understanding how awesome things can (should?) be, it is nice when websites support mobile devices.

Sites like Vimeo that scale down very nicely for just about all mobile devices make using the site that little bit nicer. So much so that I am now looking at creating mobile sites for all our websites. Having said, I know what a pain it is to create additional sites to support additional devices, etc. so as long as a site loads quickly in a mobile devices (and NobMob does if you stay away from the galleries) then I can deal with all the zoom in/zoom out that is required.

For me, very much a nice to have rather than a must have.

philberesford's picture

Hey Daveh, I agree, I can deal with all the zoom in/out. I think the site holds up remarkably well and Rob should be congratulated. My only little gripe is the user experience when submitting posts. The form fields don't scale well and thus makes it a little awkward to input. How does posting comments hold up on your Android phone?

Rob's picture

"The form fields don't scale well..."

I'd be blaming your browser for that. Are you saying that there's a scrollbar on the bottom of your page and when you type the browser can't keep the cursor in view, or scrolls in a funny way.

FWIW, we have an 800px min-width on the central section. If I change that then users who choose to shrink their window to less than that will get some funny results. No doubt there will be complaints about that.

Sorry, but really, have you tried a different browser? Opera is out for the iPhoney now isn't it?

philberesford's picture

Hey Rob
No, there's no scroll bars, just an overly wide free text field that you can't see all the text you're inputting. I can send you see some screengrabs if you like? In the meantime I'll download Opera and see how it behaves in that.
Phil

daveh's picture

I am completely spoilt with my new phone (toy?!). I had only really read a few posts on my mobile and hadn't tried to do much else. With an 800x480 AMOLED screen, the site, including the forms, look fine and scale well. A lot of zoom in/zoom out, which is to be expected but everything really performs quite admirably.

Still, it is nice to have a mobile formatted site for easy (no zoom) access. I know, "if you want it that much you are welcome to build it yourself".

Rob's picture

FWIW... I'm typing this on a dodgy old Nokia 6210 (or whatever this dinosaur is). No dramas.

No need to scroll in the input box.

Do you want to swap your iPhone? If you can handle this tech Eye-wink

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.

Best Mountain Bike