Just a couple notes-
I have a WIndows smartphone w/internet and ratrodbikes forums won't show up on it at all (using PIE / Potable Internet Explorer).
I can view the forum index page--although the formatting of it is badly screwed up--but I can still see and click on the different forum links. When I do that, nothing else ever shows up though. [edit] -Or I should say, the top banner of the page and the background shows up--but none of the actual content does.
I understand that there's utilities online for checking compatability, might be worth looking into, it might only take some minor changes so at least something shows up when someone uses a mobile browser.
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It's going to be kind of like the old days all over again.
Back when most people were stuck on dial-up Internet access, websites took pains to keep their page sizes small to avoid long loading times.... Well now it seems like so many people have cable, DSL or dish internet service, that many, many, many sites have let their pages become BLOATED with lots of stuff that isn't content, and often isn't ad-related either. Many forum sites I have tried to visit on the phone have pages over one megabyte, that only show 40 threat posts. ...??? Many blinking-GIF ads that are unreadable at small sizes,,, many Flash (swf) ads that aren't visible and don't work at all on ANY mobile phone (yet).....
With mobile phones, you're right back to where you started as a webmaster. A mobile phone browser/CPU has a tough time parsing out a page that any 10-year-old desktop PC on a fast connection can do easily. So as more and more people enter the "mobile internet age", the drive will be to reduce and simplify web sites again.
Alternately, some sites have already split their content into two different sites--a "big" one for visitors running desktop web-browsers, and a "small" one for people running mobile browsers (or proxies). Many of these sites will detect and automatically serve the proper site (many news sites are like this, like CNN) so you don't know there is a mobile site at all unless you try to view it with a mobile phone.
A few sites leave them both exposed on a regular web address, so you can see the difference.
One example would be the AR15 forums (a gun forum)-
Normal site: http://www.ar15.com/
Mobile site: http://www.ar15.com/mobile/
On my phone, the (above) regular site takes 60 to 90 seconds to load, while the mobile site takes 15-20 seconds.
Another would be the BBC site-
Regular: http://news.bbc.co.uk/
"Low Graphics Version": http://news.bbc.co.uk/low
(-but you can see that the BBC's "low graphics" version is less than just graphics--it is using a drastically simpler style of formatting also, which is what you need with a mobile device.... screens are tiny and many can be viewed in landscape or portrait mode, so formatting needs to make allowances for that and still be readable-)
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I have a WIndows smartphone w/internet and ratrodbikes forums won't show up on it at all (using PIE / Potable Internet Explorer).
I can view the forum index page--although the formatting of it is badly screwed up--but I can still see and click on the different forum links. When I do that, nothing else ever shows up though. [edit] -Or I should say, the top banner of the page and the background shows up--but none of the actual content does.
I understand that there's utilities online for checking compatability, might be worth looking into, it might only take some minor changes so at least something shows up when someone uses a mobile browser.
--------
It's going to be kind of like the old days all over again.
Back when most people were stuck on dial-up Internet access, websites took pains to keep their page sizes small to avoid long loading times.... Well now it seems like so many people have cable, DSL or dish internet service, that many, many, many sites have let their pages become BLOATED with lots of stuff that isn't content, and often isn't ad-related either. Many forum sites I have tried to visit on the phone have pages over one megabyte, that only show 40 threat posts. ...??? Many blinking-GIF ads that are unreadable at small sizes,,, many Flash (swf) ads that aren't visible and don't work at all on ANY mobile phone (yet).....
With mobile phones, you're right back to where you started as a webmaster. A mobile phone browser/CPU has a tough time parsing out a page that any 10-year-old desktop PC on a fast connection can do easily. So as more and more people enter the "mobile internet age", the drive will be to reduce and simplify web sites again.
Alternately, some sites have already split their content into two different sites--a "big" one for visitors running desktop web-browsers, and a "small" one for people running mobile browsers (or proxies). Many of these sites will detect and automatically serve the proper site (many news sites are like this, like CNN) so you don't know there is a mobile site at all unless you try to view it with a mobile phone.
A few sites leave them both exposed on a regular web address, so you can see the difference.
One example would be the AR15 forums (a gun forum)-
Normal site: http://www.ar15.com/
Mobile site: http://www.ar15.com/mobile/
On my phone, the (above) regular site takes 60 to 90 seconds to load, while the mobile site takes 15-20 seconds.
Another would be the BBC site-
Regular: http://news.bbc.co.uk/
"Low Graphics Version": http://news.bbc.co.uk/low
(-but you can see that the BBC's "low graphics" version is less than just graphics--it is using a drastically simpler style of formatting also, which is what you need with a mobile device.... screens are tiny and many can be viewed in landscape or portrait mode, so formatting needs to make allowances for that and still be readable-)
~
