State of the site when browsing on the iPhone or other mobile devices

LonePhantom · #1 10-31-2009, 04:48 AM

Hi, I'm wondering if some time can be spent working on getting the site working reasonably on the iPhone and other mobile devices.

I check out a few vBulletin forums on my iPhone, and they display a hell of a lot better than Jemsite, which is a shame, because this is my favourite forum/community.

The site is really quite unreadable which is a shame. I believe more people in the short term future will be viewing the internet on portable devices like the iPhone, and it is really important that developers ensure that their sites degrade gracefully when viewed on smaller devices.

Thanks for reading my little rant.

newbieguitarmaker · #2 10-31-2009, 04:57 AM

Yeah, the PM'ing half the time works on my iphone too

JayRobIBZ · #3 10-31-2009, 05:29 AM

I was thinking this the other day while browsing on my iPhone. I have near full functionality but the text on the forum lists don't show up as they should or with all of the information displayed on a PC. Likewise, while trying to read a thread, you have to zoom in so far to read the text that you also have to scroll an excessive amount to read each line.

My thoughts were that we should take up a collection from those who really want to use this site on their mobile devices. The money would go towards the design time needed to improve the site or create a mobile version. As a reward we could be given a tag that says something along the lines of "Mobile Power User".

LonePhantom · #4 10-31-2009, 08:50 AM

The thing is though that there shouldn't really be that much work for the site to be compatible with mobile devices. I'm pretty certain that vBulletin should be compatible.

I noticed that the version Jemsite is currently running is a few of versions old. Here we are currently running vBulletin® Version 3.7.0. Megadeth.com for example is currently running vBulletin® Version 3.7.3. It displays very nicely on the iPhone.

I'm guessing all that needs to be done is do an update of the vBulletin software to a more current release, and the site should be fine for mobile devices.

**jemsite** · #5 10-31-2009, 12:01 PM

i sent over a note to the site coders. one problem is an old skin is enabling WAP mode might be kicking in.

can you not set the iphone browser to disable "mobile" versions of a site?

i have no problem with jemsite using mini opera or IE mobile myself but don't use iPhone and we'd need some testers to provide better feedback... glen

LonePhantom · #6 10-31-2009, 05:39 PM

That's the thing, Apple wrote into the iPhone Safari browser to ignore mobile stylesheets, etc.

As I said other vBulletin based forums with more up to date versions display nicely.

I'm happy to do some testing if fixes are worked on, and can report back with my findings.

**jemsite** · #7 10-31-2009, 11:09 PM

it's not ignoring the mobile stylesheet from what i can gather.

if you're not seeing what you see on a full web browser this is a factor (easily remedied) ... g

LonePhantom · #8 11-01-2009, 01:23 AM

Yeah, ok then. I tested it in Safari (Win7) on the iPhone mode in the developer menu so I could get a screenshot of what it is like (bad).

The mobile CSS is a really bad design. Font is far too small, and there is too much horizontal scrolling to try and read anything.

For testing you don't need an iPhone or iPod Touch, etc, just Safari installed.

**jemsite** · #9 11-01-2009, 12:08 PM

as expected that is the WEP "mobile alabama" template which the iPhone is incorrectly rendering or incapable of ignoring. The web programmers here can disable that in minutes (i don't have access to do that)... glen

LonePhantom · #10 11-01-2009, 04:28 PM

Awesome, I'll be very thankful if they could do that.

I'm quite surprised that the iPhone is using that one. As I had mentioned previously the Apple developers had tried to build the mobile Safari browser to "ignore" mobile stylesheet checks, and from experience testing sites I have worked on I have seen this work in action.

alan_w · #11 11-02-2009, 08:32 AM

We are disabling now the "Mobile Alabama" template to see if that solves the issue. If it doesn't, we have another idea which should be a couple of hours work and we'd be happy to give it a try.

Pls check (within 30 mins of this post) and report back on this thread. Thanks!

**jemsite** · #12 11-02-2009, 11:06 AM

Thanks Alan! If iPhone users can check this later today that would be great. You should NOT see any screenshots like above when Mobile Alabama is disabled

LonePhantom · #13 11-02-2009, 04:37 PM

Unfortunately all you get now is a blank page.

If you want to test this out for yourself you can do so by downloading the Safari browser, enabling the Developer menu, and then setting the user agent to iPhone.

I think the site will most probably be ok with the standard CSS set, so there are ways of doing sniffs for the iPhone browser resolution (i.e doing a check for "max-device-width: 480px", etc.

That way, if the alabama mobile set works ok for other hand helds you can leave it on, and use the max-device-width for forcing the regular, or "lite" version (if you want to make a slightly different one to remove some unnecessary elements) for the iPhone.

Hope this info is helpful. Definitely download Safari though, then you can test stuff as if you had an iPhone.

**jemsite** · #14 11-02-2009, 04:53 PM

how much shovel/spyware does Safari require? i'll get it installed on a test PC by tomorrow.

not sure if they've completed the work but hopefully they can test with safari too while tweaking the code. Mobile Alabama needs to go as it's a skin from vb3.

ON a side note, this is why Android is poised to relegate iPhone to Mac status by next summer (especially if iPhone stays locked to dreaded ATT). I mean the fact that iPhone browser can't even render properly a webpage or force the full nonmobile site - is simply disgraceful. That's not to say this won't be fixed asap regardless

... glen

**jemsite** · #15 11-02-2009, 05:16 PM

i have safari installed. seeing the blank page.

FYI you enable developer menu in advanced options under preference. safari XP seems to crash on jemsite.com

is there NOT a way to force iPhone to use NON-MOBILE versions of sites. quick google says NO there is not (was in 2.0x since removed)... glen