Mobile version

[Sceadwian]

I have a mobile phone that has an Internet browser, but not nearly as sophisticated or fast as more state of the art Android/Iphone ect... Samsung Reality to be specific. Does great for Google, Wikipedia (which has a mobile version to tone down graphics and style sheets) and many websites that use simpler interfaces. It can JUST barely load Electro-Tech, I wouldn't consider this website functional on a phone like mine/

I'm not sure what the popularity of it might be but it'd be nice to see a super basic version of the website that had limited functionality. Log in, browse threads, search for new posts, search for unanswered post, check subscribed threads. (my personal favorite recent one click feature) that's more friendly to mobile phone's. Obviously you'd still want an advertisement banner but after that keeping things simple and low bandwidth to be mobile friendly would be something I would use. Not so sure about others though =)

 

[rmain1972]

I have an android phone which I use to view new posts on while I'm at work, so it is functional. I have to double tap to zoom in on areas that I want to see. I would also be interested in a mobile version. I'm not sure how much coding would have to happen in order to see this though.

 

[ElectroMaster]

Hi guys,

I've been looking into this for a while. If we can get some more people interested to show that people do indeed use the site from a mobile I will start work on one.

Regards,
EM

 

[Sceadwian]

ElectroMaster, as I stated previously this site is completely unusable from my mobile phone (I don't consider a 5 minutes page load time usable), which is pretty capable for being a non-smartphone and as rmain said it's a navigational hassle for even for smart phone's because the screen size is smaller, the site is simply not designed for it.

How can you ask the users if there's a market for a feature your site inherently has no support for? Asking 'if' users here might use this feature won't give you any kind of feel for who would use it because mobile users that run across the site on their devices will quickly be detracted by the ungainliness on their device, and one's such as myself that might otherwise run across it wouldn't be able to tolerate the load times and would never come back.

The mobile user base is different from the typical net user base, and since the site doesn't support mobile devices tolerably then there is no one here that is qualified to respond =)

I personally check Facebook and/or news from time to time during the day during my breaks and lunch as well as during any other down time. It allows me to turn otherwise simple waiting time into productive time, and a massively increasing portion of the population uses the net in this way. Given the growth in the mobile market in the last few years in otherwise stagnant economic times, by not making a mobile friendly version of the site you're excluding a larger and larger portion of the population from all those nice ads that you'd like people to see, not to mention the incredible raw information available on the forums. Greater accessibility to any group especially a massivly growing one is never a waste of time.

**broken link removed**

 

[ElectroMaster]

have a go now. There is a mobile style installed.

 

[rmain1972]

How do you get to it? I'm using firefox 4 mobile. If it is supposed to be automatic it doesn't seem to be working. The site is operatong as before.

 

[Sceadwian]

Yep, same here, no change in the appearance of the page, not as bad as the last time I tried but it still look me three minutes to log in and navigate to subscribed threads. It may have to do with the way the browsers report it's capabilities/version. For websites such as Wikipedia if I go directly to the URL it'll load the full massive image and style sheet version of Wikipedia, I have to manually go to the mobile.wikied.org html link to get the mobile friendly version.

I'm not sure what detection methods Facebook uses, but it will automatically send me to the mobile version of the page. This may be a problem for some users especially rmain who's mobile browser will still advertise as being fully capable. The only suggestion I can make is that there be a secondary check box on the login (like the keep me logged in one) that will log you into the mobile version of the site and store a cookie as well that will allow the mobile version of the site come up every time the site is accessed as long as that cookie is there.

 

[ElectroMaster]

try to access the site from this url:

https://www.electro-tech-online.com/index.php?styleid=26

 

[Sceadwian]

It's either not redirecting the PHP page properly or the two 'styleids' are the same no difference of any kind from the normal ET home page. I tried it both on my PC and my phone, same thing.

 

[cobra1]

i have a blackberry torch and use the site on there, again i have to zoom to where i want to see. personally it doesnt bother me since the pages load near instantly and browsing using the zoom has become a bit of a habit.

 

[Sceadwian]

cobra1, how long does your phone last on a full charge with normal usage? With heavy Internet usage?

 

[cobra1]

it lasts about a day, i goto work at 7:30am fresh charge, i play with my phone pretty much all day, internet, emails, text, messenger. and its almost flat when going to bed at about 11pm.

 

[Sceadwian]

Right, mine lasts about 3 days. We're not talking about the same kind of phone. Though you would be the first person to say that zooming in and out of pages on here is 'normal'

 

[ElectroMaster]

Try again guys. it seems to be working for me now.

 

[rmain1972]

Its working now. Is there a way to get to 'New Posts' ? Thank you btw.

 

[rmain1972]

Its working now. Is there a way to get to 'New Posts' ? Thank you btw. Found the 'Full Site' link.

 

[rmain1972]

FYI code tag overwrites the posts below it. I was reading 'PIC mikroC LED Display' in the micro forum.

 

[Sceadwian]

I don't know what abortion of a code translator that 'mobile' page came from, but it's actually slower than the original site on my phone. I think I'll just give up on trying to access it from my phone as that sort of compact form factor has been lost to the wayside of smartphones. FB does it cause they have to support every device that it possibly can. PHP translation isn't that great. You'd have to hand code an interface to make it useful. Waste of time in context.

 

[KeepItSimpleStupid]

Yea, yesterday I used the mobile version too. It was horrible until I found the way to get back to the other one. I kept accidently unsubscribing to threads from the emailed blurbs.