Testing your content on mobile for reading

Beyond layout: reading limitations on people

[explorador]

Hi webmasters, there was a time when, if you were serious, you had to check your website layout on every major browser, meaning you should at least have Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera and Firefox. Every browser would display the website slightly different due to variations in rendering (specially padding and margin), those days are over since major browsers did a better job adopting standards, and then the variety of rendering engines reduced, and different web browsers use the (few) most common rendering engines.

Then some of us adapted and tested designs and layouts against screen sizes. Suddenly 800x600 was out, and most people had 1024+whatever, or 1200+whatever. Then new machines appeared with native 1680+whatever and somehow some layouts (specially fluid) appeared terrible on screen, or tiny due to fixed width. These are all details only serious webmasters approached, and sure it paid well due to using and providing the right UX. I'm not sure in this forum someone would disagree, and if so, I'm not sure if I would care to engage on a discussion about it.

What about now?
I still create original content from time to time, years of experience and also specific writing/editing training helped to improve my skills, but how do you condense and compress quality content?

• When you teach, or when you write, you learn descriptions and narrative face a limit of compression (short stories).
  
• Also, when you teach or when you write, there is a point where descriptions END, and distinctions begin, and become heavily important
  
• Splitting your article/content into multiple pages can sometimes bring more harm than benefit.
  
• Writing short stories might end up on "you may as well write nothing because the final product doesn't make enough sense anyway".

But it's undeniable how much people now read on mobile devices, visually things look different regarding layout and paragraph length. Suddenly, checking your content on mobile makes a lot of sense, just as we used to check layouts on specific tech in the past. Are you doing it? what's your approach? Most of us here I think have more than decent writing and reading skills, specially due to how much we research and write over the years, so long paragraphs present little to no challenge, but new generations are different, new audiences are way difference.

Decided to place this thread on this area, as it's more general (design, layout), than just about content generation or writing.

[TorontoBoy]

Content is king. Write as you wish and contribute to the knowledge of the world. I never want to compromise my message because of some technical issue that may resolve itself as generations of tech improve.

I occasionally check the odd smartphone, but there are too many form factors out there, not to mention screen sizes in laptop and desktop. If you have sufficient money and time you could find out who most visits your site (awstats minus the bots) and tailor to their tech needs. I do this with customers that have a lot of money. For me I'd rather sink more effort into original content than to worry about something that renders slightly askew.

[Martin Potter]

Content is king. ... I never want to compromise my message because of some technical issue ...

Amen! I could not have said it any better myself. Thanks.

[tangor]

When I dropped fixed pixel to EM proportionate and set content to containers that fit most of these problems disappeared. This is a recurring battle between "visual art" and "content" wherein the content is treated as an art object... finally opted to the content side to make sure the content was actually readable!

YMMV

[TorontoBoy]

the content is treated as an art object..

Oh, my heart just skipped a beat. There was a time when friends would purposely turn of all images. I am coming 'round back to this point! Without good content I'd rather watch squirrels playing outside my window, rather than web visual content.

[tangor]

Back in the day when the web was much slower (2400 baud!) killing images made great sense. Even later, circa 1996, it sometimes made sense to kill images. These days speed is pretty widespread, but the adage "a picture is worth a thousands words" means nothing if the image(s) used are not 100% aligned with content offered.

I rarely use more than one image per article, unless the content requires (think charts, graphs relating to the content itself).

[explorador]

I'm on that page, entirely: content is king. However, I'm puzzled about the lost on reading skills and comprehension people are showing. This was attempted to be discussed here a few years back, most people rejected it. Then the topic appeared a few years later and it was a bit different, because more webmasters and content creators were more aware people seem to be getting dumber. Other circles showed the same trend: rejection, then slowly noticing.

My wife works at one of the largest well known local universities, and the authorities are concerned about the terrible reading skills of the students and recently graduated "professionals". As first measure, they are making mandatory to take some courses at the end of their journey, it's basic stuff that was once included at schools, why? because they are dumb, getting dumber. One of the directors at Industrial Design shares tales of how students complain in pain when they are forced to read ONE page of text. Homework works differently, they said they read, but their work shows they didn't, or failed miserably at it.

I feel more and more comfortable talking about this, as more people are becoming increasingly aware this is actually happening. To me, content is still king, but I'm also aware some people just bounce and leave when what they see (for reading) seems impossible to them, and go to other places with terrible information.

[TorontoBoy]

It is truly disconcerting when university professors bemoan the lack of attention span of their students. Social media encourages a short attention span and quick hits of dopamine. If a reader does not have the determination to read through a page of text related to their search, then that's their loss. I'm not going to do a video for them. This is their shortcoming, not ours.

[explorador]

True (TorontoBoy).

BTW, I'm involved in some work directly with the university teachers and directors, and it's been a constant issue dealing with bad practices... such as (them) teaching words that do not exist in Spanish, or English. These words are not even related to any language at all, they just made them up and use them without discrimination. Yes there are issues with badly written words, but this is beyond it (our native language is Spanish). So at times this is quite discouraging, finding that the students are explaining these words to others, as a consequence of teachers creating terrible habits, and seeing them embrace such terms is shocking.