Not a bad effort, but I think the mobile (lite) verison could do with some work. All the following has been tried on an iPhone and hence that is the perspective of the comments:
1) The login screen, I had to zoom in to be able to click in them and type.
2) After logging in, the thread list was again too "zoomed out". I had to zoom in to be able to properly click on any thread, but then it was side-scroll city.
3) I have seen on many mobile sites the address bar being scrolled up and out of the way once the page is loaded. Looks a lot more professional.
4) Going into a thread, once again the text is too small. You need to zoom in, but then you have to scroll from side to side, as the text wrap is too wide on the screen.
5) Buttons or links like the Reply button should be made bigger to accommodate fingers.
6) And again, replying brings up boxes that are both too small (on initial zoom) and too large (once entered) to allow comfortable use.
But, saying all that, it is certainly a great start and a good idea. I'm sure there are many here that are CSS buffs that could make it even better.
Thanks,
Mark
Testing reply via iPhone.
Cheers,
Mark
The lite mode itself has been around for ages - it's just the convenient subdomain recently added.
We've got several iPhone users (and plenty of Android, WinMo, etc) and nobody has yet mentioned zooming as being necessary - are you sure you don't have your text size defaulted to small, or something?
Maybe a font-size preference (like the main UI has) could solve that in any case.
The zooming causing side-scrolls is an iPhone bug - at least on my Android mobile it wraps the text to the screen as you zoom - which is sensible behaviour for a mobile. With the above font pref, this issue would go away anyway.
For buttons, again could use font pref. The only issue I have with buttons is the radio buttons for html mode - it would be good if they could have labels added for easier use (I think this applies to non lite mode also; can't remember for sure).
Oh, and when posting a new thread, the Post button is at the bottom and half under the onscreen quick nav control thing... not explained very well, maybe if another Android user can see what I mean? (same problem with Apply button on edit page).
For point 3, I'm a bit confused - the address bar is part of the browser, not the page?
Unless there's some metatag that instructs mobile Safari to hide it, but that doesn't make sense.
Can you clarify what you're seeing/expecting for this?
>>Oh, and when posting a new thread, the Post button is at the bottom and half under the onscreen quick nav control thing... not explained very well, maybe if another Android user can see what I mean? (same problem with Apply button on edit page).
D'ya mean Zoomy button things that appear when you swipe around the page? It used to cover the Post button for me (not a problem, just wait a second for it to disapear again and then post), but since Matt moved the Project Beehive Forum link to the right and down a line, the controlls are now under the post button rather than over it.
Yay for matt \o/.
>are you sure you don't have your text size defaulted to small, or something?
There is no text sizing option in the Safari prefs on the iPhone. Only for the Mail app. I just tried changing that and did indeed change the font size in Mail (I had it as Small) to a size that was unnecessarily large. But no difference made in Safari.
I can take a screenshot and upload it, if you wish, or if someone else doesn't beat me to it.
>The zooming causing side-scrolls is an iPhone bug
Mmm... I can see your point of view... But explain to me what happens on a normal (not a cut down mobile version) HTML page that is quite busy. Say like THESUN.CO.UK on the Android. Are you saying that if you zoom in, all the text gets bigger AND wraps to your screen size? I can't imagine how that would work??? From my point of view, the iPhone works as I expect it to. *shrug*
>Unless there's some metatag that instructs mobile Safari to hide it, but that doesn't make sense.
Correct, there is. Well, I think so, anyway. Basically, you can load a page (even if it is a long one) normally which keeps the address bar in view, or with some fancy coding, you can make the "start point" of the view window of the page to not include the address bar height, assuming the page is long enough.
To see what I mean, for the iPhone users out there (and would be interested what the Androiders see as well :)) go to this address, which is on my company's website:
http://www.xclusive.com.au/!phone/iNdex.asp
It is still under development so you will get errors unless you try ONLY the following:
Home Page - Notice how all clickables are finger friendly.
Scroll to bottom and enter "Eye Candy" in nicely sized search box and then click on the nicely sized search button. :)
Again, notice address bar sliding away, and links to products being nicely spread out for finger-friendly clicking.
Click on one of the products.
Notice the size of the picture and fonts - All sized to be immediately readable, not too small, not too large, and only need vertical scrolling to get to it all, if needed.
Not sure if mobile banking is as popular in the UK as it is here, but give this site a go on your mobile device: www.anz.com
I consider this my "reference site" for mobile development. Very easy to navigate, big finger friendly clickables. Slides away the address bar. Nice colouring and contouring. Properly sized text without zooming or side-scrolling. Just perfect.
And no, my iPhone is not broken. :)
Cheers,
Mark