Thought I'd chime in regarding Safari and using an iPad

Interesting.  I still find HTF incredibly frustrating on both my iPhone and iPad.  I cursed the editor twice this week already in the Mac forums...

Sam there was an update yesterday to help with the line break problem on Safari Mobile (iPhone/iPad).  If you haven't tried it since last night try it today.

Will do!

I'll chime in here, as a new iPhone owner. HTF is very difficult to use on the iPhone 4 in Mobile Safari. The Reply Box in general has problems with rendering and formatting.

 

I'm substantially happy with HTF behavior and upgrades on the desktop. So it's a shock to clunk around on a mobile device. Hopefully there's easy tweaks; I can appreciate a dedicated mobile browser version or app is a big investment and not a high priority.

Some look good, zooomed in, like DaringFireball. Some have mobile sites specific to the narrow column, like MacWorld.com (it seems). Then there are the website-replacement apps, like Facebook, that are pretty fantastic. But other websites, like HTF are designed for the computer monitor and don't play nice on a mobile screen.

 

Thanks for your comments guys.  I'm glad you have been noticing improvements.  Based on the fact that 98% of our traffic is desktop based we have been focusing almost all out attention there. The next release continues that with some things I know some members will be pleased with.  With bugs getting squished, and the progress we have made so far on requested features getting added, we are starting to working with Hudder on the mobile front, but it will probably be at least several months  before we have a complete solution.  In the meantime you will see more incremental tweaks and fixes to better support mobile along the lines of the paragraph fix Nelson referred to in his first post.
 

HTF is one of the increasingly few sites that is especially difficult to use on a mobile device. I'm really noticing it now, as I'm doing more and more of my web surfing on my iPhone, and less and less on a normal computer and I have to make special trip to my desk computer to post on HTF.

 

Two particular problems areas I've found are:

 

1) Subscription links require two taps to follow. The first tap causes new information about the subscription to appear, like a hidden piece of the display was unfurled. The second tap then follows it.

 

2) The reply box is simply bonkers when used in Mobile Safari. It doesn't scale or wrap at all like a conventional Form. It often scales such that it extends below the virtual keyboard on the iPhone so that you can't see what you're typing. It also seems to erratically change scaling from too big to too small. I've concluded it's on the edge of unusable on a mobile device.

 

Mobile-optimized pagee, even dedicated apps, are great and all. But if these two aspects were tuned up, the normal site HTF would be far easier to enjoy on a mobile device.

 

I can take some screen shots, if it would help. But I suspect everyone is already familiar with these behaviors on their own iPhones :)

I can certainly verify Dave's experiences with this forum and Mobile Safari on the iPhone.

 

In general, I simply use the iPhone 4 to *read* these forums.  With the "tap to zoom" ability in Mobile Safari, iPhone 4 does a great job of rendering HTF threads easily legible and readable in landscape mode.   After trying to reply to a thread and "losing" the "Post" and/or "Preview" buttons, I decided to just wait until I was back at my laptop for any posting.  (As Dave indicated, this behavior is intermittent; but that makes it all the more frustrating.) 

 

As an aside, many of the forums that I regularly frequent have now added an "app" iteration for iPhone and Android devices.  It would be great if HTF could provide that at some point in the future!

(In many cases these "apps" just consist of specialized HTML5 code which runs in Mobile Safari and/or Mobile Chrome and can therefore be updated dynamically and service both mobile platforms simultaneously.)

 

 

 

 

Yeah, I don't post much from my Bitstream Bolt browser (on my Blackberry Tour) either though it works better for posting than Mobile Safari (on iPod Touch in my case).  I really disliked typing on the iPod Touch's screen anyway -- just way too error-prone even though I don't have fat fingers/thumbs or anything.

 

I think I'm gonna want to stick w/ a mobile device that comes w/ a reasonable hard keyboard -- probably something that works best for thumb typing.  The keyboard on my Blackberry Tour took some getting used to -- and it's still not great for thumb typing, but much better than using a small touch screen on any of these mobile devices.

 

Hopefully, HTF will work much better w/ Mobile Safari (and Mobile Chrome) by the time I'm ready to buy an iPad (or maybe an Android equiv).

 

_Man_

Edited by ManW_TheUncool - 7/23/10 at 1:05am

I came across an explanation for a behavior that was baffling me. On the iPhone's Mobile Safari, it's necessary to tap a subscription link twice, from the home page, to go to the thread. The reason why, I've learned, is that the links have a mouse-over (hover) feature. Since there is no "hover" in iOS, this is dealt with by two taps. The first triggers the hover behavior, and the second triggers the link itself.

 

I like the hover behavior for desktop use, but it's a nuisance on mobile Safari.

 

If any optimizations are done for mobile use, I suggest removing the hover trigger specifically for mobile browsers.

We definitely need an app for mobile application. Believe if I can find the tools I will write one myself. Personally I have been using my EVO on the forum and it loads and works great.

 

I am still pushing for a mobile version for the site though.

 

Do you see the same mouse-over behavior on your EVO? Or does its browser handle the hover feature differently? MobileSafari largely renders HTF well, but it has the well-discussed issues with the "Reply" box.

 

A mobile optimized site would be great (like MacWorld.com or Ihnatko.com do), or an app version like with Facebook or some other forums. It's been said that mobile traffic is low so a mobile-specialized version is a low priority. But I do wonder if it's a build-it-and-they-will come issue.

 

Regardless, if you concoct something, keep me in mind as a beta tester :)

:) it looks like a mobile optimization was snuck into the apple forum. That or it's rendering in a strangely useful way in just that section.

I like this a lot! But, on my iPhone the width should be 25% to 33% narrower for best reading. If this is an area if active experimentation please go through some different widths to gauge reaction and readability.

Thanks!

Dave-

Like Parker mentioned we are working on a mobile specific app for the site, but it is still a several months out.  In the meantime over the last few updates and continuing into the feature we will be rolling out incremental tweaks to improve the mobile experience on the site.

Personally I think an 'app' is the wrong way to go....  Unless you are explaining it badly.

 

I absolutely am .  Essentially we are looking for a mobile version of the site that will play nice with mobile browsers be it on a blackberry, HTC, iPhone/pad, etc.  You will have a basic reply box with BBCode support, not the WYSIWYG editor used here. (Which will be also available on the non-mobile version as a selectable option), and other mobile friendly things.

Ok good, thumbs up to that. Thought you meant a downloadable, per device type executable, ala Tapatalk or something similar you would get from an 'app store'