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How is your mobile browsing experience.

Brent

Administrator
For those that do not use our iOS or Android apps, how do you like browsing the forum on your phone using your web browser?
 
I'm using Internet explorer on Windows phone.

I haven't come across any actual issues while browsing, except for the obvious ones that happen on any mobile device. Things get resized, buttons get jumbled around a bit and end up stack up rather than next to each other, which doesn't change at all when I change to landscape mode. I guess IE on WP doesn't want to utilize the horizontal scrollbar too much (which is fine, since going from left to right to read something is annoying).

The minor thing I could comment on; the buttons are relatively big on mobile devices. Obviously tablets are big enough, but not every smartphone is sized like a Samsung Galaxy Note (you know, between a smartphone and a tablet). So to be sure I don't accidentally hit the wrong button, I'd rather zoom in a bit. They're spaced nicely though, so misclicking wouldn't occur as much. Portrait mode has the Report and "select post" button (for us Moderators) really close to each other in portrait mode (but I rarely browse in portrait mode; at least forums usually go in landscape for me personally).

I've tried Tapatalk on my phone as well... seems fine for browsing, just not for moderating, heh.

That's what I've ran into thus far. Still trying out some odd ball things, which I never even used on a regular computer, just to see if there's no glitches here.

I'm not an expert on Windows phone, but given it's small group of users (and I don't even know if anyone on this forum has this OS on their phone) I guess things related to such phones (and perhaps my phone in particular when it comes to browsing AC; I have a Nokia Lumia 1020) and testing them out on such a device could always go to me.
 
Thus far it's been working well enough--quite well, in fact--that I don't even use Tapatalk anymore unless I want to post a picture. Of course, I rarely use it on my phone, but on the iPad it works much better than the old site used to.
 
Tried the site on my mobile today. Browsing was functional and the site looked good (pages seemed a little heavy to load over 3G), but the rich edit box to reply to a thread was not usable - typed characters took minutes(!) to show up.

Not sure if this is of concern though as my mobile runs neither iOS nor Android - I'm running Maemo Linux (the native OS for my phone, a Nokia N900) and the browser was MicroB (also native) - a Firefox variant (equivalent to Firefox 3.5).
 
I can't work out how to do a search using my iPhone. Apart from that it's still all good.
 
Tried the site on my mobile today. Browsing was functional and the site looked good (pages seemed a little heavy to load over 3G), but the rich edit box to reply to a thread was not usable - typed characters took minutes(!) to show up.

Not sure if this is of concern though as my mobile runs neither iOS nor Android - I'm running Maemo Linux (the native OS for my phone, a Nokia N900) and the browser was MicroB (also native) - a Firefox variant (equivalent to Firefox 3.5).

I do not think the forum software is designed for older browsers like that. Especially for mobile.
 
I do not think the forum software is designed for older browsers like that. Especially for mobile.
Well, I'm not convinced that the age of my browser is the issue... and you didn't suggest browsers more than a year or two old weren't included in your request for feedback; you requested only "For those that do not use our iOS or Android apps, how do you like browsing the forum on your phone using your web browser?" which is exactly what I tested - if you don't care if it works on my configuration that's up to you, but then I feel you should have been clearer and when I made sure to include the details of my test and give you an out for not wanting to support a config that we both I suppose expect makes represents a tiny proportion of your traffic I feel you could expressed that without blaming arbitary specs seemingly without any justification.

Further testing would suggest that if I ask my browser to lie to the web and say it's the Safari-based iPhone 4 browser Apple ships, then the issue goes away; however it goes away because if my browser lies then this site removes the feature I reported the issue with(the BBcode WYSIWYG editor) from the page which is served.

Thus, unless I'm missing something the implication of what I've seen is that issue's got nothing to do with my browser specifically, or it's age... I would thus appreciate confirmation that other mobile browsers are given only the BBcode source editor without the button to switch to the WYSIWYG version (which otherwise is default)?
(incidentally when my phone is served the page with the WYSIWYG BBcode editor, clicking the button to switch to the non-WYSIWYG editor also takes a very long time, ie. minutes)

Further possible test case (seemed like it could be a bug): Start typing a message in the WYSIWYG editor for a thread on a desktop browser, let it be saved as a draft, now visit the thread with a mobile, the draft text should show, are you about to continue with the message or do you have to clear the draft from the desktop before you can reply to that thread?
 
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The Android app works great, I've been using it exclusively since becoming a member and haven't had problem one. Posting is easy, url's seem to work (YouTube videos) fine, I haven't uploaded a picture in a message yet, guess I'll figure that out eventually.
 
Testing pictures...
 

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I use an ipad for my browsing; seems to work fine. I do prefer the web browser to the app, just as it's a bit warmer in appearance, and has many more options.
 
Lol I've only ever used my ipod5! I don't even really know what it looks like from a computer point of view!
 
The mobile browsing experience here is better than on most other forums. The responsive design works very well, and I never feel like I'm having a limited or otherwise inferior experience, as I do on most mobile sites.

I'm just curious, would it be possible to add an option for users to disable the site's responsive design in preferences? While it's great for smaller devices, I personally find it distracting and unnecessary on my iPad.
 

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