Why no mobile version of Webmaster World?

[jonathanleger]

Been wondering about this for a while but never bothered to post the question, so here it is at last:

Why is there no mobile version of Webmaster World?

I'd love to be able to follow some of the threads on my phone when I'm stuck waiting on an appointment, etc.

Just curious.

Jon

[g1smd]

WebmasterWorld works just fine on my Android mobile.

[SevenCubed]

Webmaster World works adequately enough on my dinky semi-smart Samsung SGH-T469W too. But I have to be really determined to want to reply to something to post from it. I read WW threads from it sometime when I'm out for a coffee (ya ya I know, hi my name is Cube and I'm an internet addict).

But that new Blackberry Z10 is looking mighty fine. Probably best among all the OS's for security too. I think it's running on QNX? QNX is wicked fast real time processing with heavy loads, I've worked with it in a proprietary system before RIM bought it recently. <oops sorry OT>

[jonathanleger]

It "works", but it's not user friendly. There's a lot of scrolling and swiping to do everything. And sometimes, for some reason, the posts won't "shrink" to the proper size. Like some element in the post is forcing the table to remain wide, and that makes it very difficult to read the threads.

All of the other forums I frequent either have mobile-friendly versions or use an app like Tap-A-Talk that makes it SO much easier all around.

Just wondering why WebmasterWorld doesn't do one of those things.

[lucy24]

some element in the post is forcing the table to remain wide

That's not exclusively a mobile problem, it just becomes more noticeable :)

If something is [ pre ] formatted, or if it contains a long series of non-breakable characters, the line can't break unless your browser-or-equivalent is brave enough to chop it at mid-word.

:: insert gratuitous praise for HTML5's <wbr> feature here ::

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

As I understand it this is an old forum built on bespoke forum software that was designed about 15 years ago. It has a lot of problems because it does not include many of the basic features and editing tools that we find in most of today's forum packages.

IMO the forum would be much better (and more popular) if we could move to one of the more modern platforms. New people arriving here must think they have travelled back in time ;) but perhaps compatibility issues preclude any transfer.

[jonathanleger]

I would think that given the very basic layout of WebmasterWorld (which I like) it would be pretty easy to translate it into a mobile format.

[lucy24]

:: mopping brow ::

Whew. I thought some officious so-and-so had locked the thread as I was in the instant of hitting the Submit button to say...

---

Forums-- not just WebmasterWorld-- tend to rely heavily on tables for layout. Not strictly "Tabular Data" but definitely tabular in the sense that there's a relationship between rows (one person/post after another) and columns (info in one column, text in another). Quick and easy ... but doesn't translate very well to small mobile devices. Tablets sure; telephones not so much.

Alternative stylesheet maybe

@media handheld {
tr {display: block;}
td {display: inline-block;}
}

et cetera (making this up off the top of my head, duh) so things can display sequentially rather than side-by-side.

But is it really too much to ask that the forums include the humble "charset" declaration? It needs to be done separately for the View window and the Posting window, unless there's a site-wide setting. Only minutes ago I was in yet another thread where one person had posted in Latin-1* and another had posted in UTF-8 so no matter what setting you use, one post will come out wrong.


* Interpreted by most browsers as de facto Windows-Latin-1, creating a whole nother sticky mess.

[bakedjake]

All of the other forums I frequent either have mobile-friendly versions or use an app like Tap-A-Talk that makes it SO much easier all around.

It's a commonly requested feature, for sure. It's something I'd like to look at doing in the future.

[Panthro]

Yeah this place needs all kids of help. But I think those problems chase people away from here which I think, in this industry, is a good thing.

[engine]

I agree we can do better, and it's someting we're already investigating, amongst many other exciting ideas.

[jonathanleger]

Glad to hear that it's on the table. It'd be a welcomed addition to an already great forum.

[HuskyPup]

It "works", but it's not user friendly.

Have you tried using Opera Mini? It works perfectly on my Nokia E7 with a double tap in both portrait and landscape with no pinching necessary.

[jonathanleger]

No, I haven't. I COULD do that, of course, but I'd rather not have to switch back and forth between browsers to make it work. :)

I can do that in the meantime, though.

[Hoople]

There was an improvement survey taken more than a while ago. A gut feeling (mine) was the response was overwhelming in a good/bad way. A few changes were made immediately afterwards and then it was crickets chirping until the recent sale.

I'm not saying I know anything but my life experience suggests that the 'improvement list' has been revisited as a part of the sale/closing of sale at least once.

[racingfox]

Just purchased a mobile forum reader "tapatalk", but found some other version of WW there, which was strange.

Is it possible to interface with that app? Readability looks good.

[engine]

racingfox, we're looking at a whole bunch of new ideas.

I'd ask for patience as it's not going to happen overnight.

[Swanny007]

For what it's worth I use Tapatalk for nearly all the forums I frequent. I don't care about a mobile friendly layout here, just give Taptalk support and I'm good. Any forums without TT plugin get visited less often, when I'm on my main computer.