# Mobile view



## smutchin (8 Nov 2013)

I've only just caught up with the reasons for no longer being able to access CC via Tapatalk - mainly because I've had very limited desktop access lately and it's a royal pain in the backside using CC via Safari on my iPhone, so I've ended up just not visiting CC much.

Now, I don't want to reopen the debate but as regards viewing the forum on a mobile browser, am I missing something? A lot of people have said how good the mobile view is, so I can only assume there's a switch somewhere that I need to press to make it work, because frankly, they can't possibly be talking about the same mobile view that I'm getting...

Anyone?


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## fossyant (8 Nov 2013)

You need a better phone with a bigger screen, like samsung. None of these tiny iPhone things.


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## smutchin (8 Nov 2013)

Thank you for your contribution. 

Seriously, though, is that all it is - it's just crap on an iPhone? I'm not complaining - I just need to know that's what it is rather than not knowing how to optimise the view.


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## ColinJ (8 Nov 2013)

[On laptop] My Xperia Ray only has a 3.3" screen and CC is now usable on it. Hang on, let me switch to it ...


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## ColinJ (8 Nov 2013)

[Tiny smartphone] Honestly, it does work!


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## smutchin (8 Nov 2013)

And what magic button did you press to make it usable on such a small screen?


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## Shaun (8 Nov 2013)

The layout will modify itself automatically based on the size and orientation of the screen; try it in both landscape and portrait mode - one may work better for you than the other.


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## ColinJ (8 Nov 2013)

smutchin said:


> And what magic button did you press to make it usable on such a small screen?


As Shaun said - the forum software adapted to my little screen in either orientation.

The 2 steps I had to take to make it usable were:

Put on my reading glasses! The text was a sensible size, but my eyes need a little help these days ...
Use a small stylus. My fingers are too big for clicking links on a 3.3" screen. (I have a stylus which docks in the phone's earphone socket.)


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## albion (8 Nov 2013)

Sounds like an old phone Colin.

Clicking small links now goes to an auto zoom so you can confirm a correct click.
Its probably how people manage with those new fange dangle high definition screens.


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## ColinJ (8 Nov 2013)

albion said:


> Sounds like an old phone Colin.
> 
> Clicking small links now goes to an auto zoom so you can confirm a correct click.
> Its probably how people manage with those new fange dangle high definition screens.


Only a couple of years or so old ... It can do the zooming thing. but I don't want to have to click everything twice. Anyway, using the stylus helps keep the screen relatively free from greasy fingerprints!


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## Booyaa (9 Nov 2013)

I use it on an iPhone and I find it better than tapatalk. There is no magic button.


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## ColinJ (9 Nov 2013)

It should look something like that on your phone, if all is well!


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## smutchin (9 Nov 2013)

Shaun said:


> The layout will modify itself automatically based on the size and orientation of the screen



Yep, it does that, so I guess it's behaving as it should, whether I like it or not. Ho hum!

I did find Tapatalk a lot more user-friendly, Shaun, but I understand your reasons for removing support and I remain grateful for what must be a lot of effort required to keep the forum going.


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## smutchin (9 Nov 2013)

Booyaa said:


> I use it on an iPhone and I find it better than tapatalk.



"YMMV" as they say.


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## PaulSB (13 Nov 2013)

Like smutchin I'm finding the mobile version poor, in my view it is a very, very poor comparison to TapaTalk. My visits have dropped by 90% at least and I rarely dally when I do visit. 

Is there a guide or help for those of us struggling with the mobile version? I'm an iPhone user as well

As an aside other sites I use via TapaTalk don't run advertising.


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## smutchin (13 Nov 2013)

[QUOTE 2766098, member: 45"]I'm not sure what the issue is.[/quote]

The issue is that forum browsing is sub-optimal on an iPhone using Safari. HTH.


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## smutchin (13 Nov 2013)

2766113 said:


> When Shaun told us that it would magically adapt, I was expecting the phone to get bigger. Imagine my disappointment.



Ooh, now there's an idea - a switch to toggle between iPhone and iPad mode would be nice.


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## threebikesmcginty (13 Nov 2013)

Not that it's of any help but CC works fine on my iphone and it's excellent for uploading beer photos!


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## threebikesmcginty (13 Nov 2013)

Is that the problem then, it's not the phone it's that Smutch is a ham-fisted hyperopic*?!




*is that a word?


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## smutchin (13 Nov 2013)

Yes and yes.


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## PaulSB (13 Nov 2013)

[QUOTE 2766291, member: 259"]Can I just chip in to say that CC works perfectly on my Android as long as I have remembered my magnifying glass and I don't need to click any of the text. [/quote]

Yep that would cover much of it. For example if I hit the topic title text 90% of the time it opens up the poster's profile because if one doesn't hit the title precisely there's a tendency for the finger to get a greater contact with the user name below. Logs me out at every visit despite requesting other wise. There is no apparent back button. Lots of other little niggles.

I agree the look etc. is fine but usability scores about 1/10. Anyway I don't want to create an issue about this. As I said before my visits have dropped dramatically and will probably remain so as it's very frustrating trying to navigate around when previously it was a breeze.


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## smutchin (13 Nov 2013)

PaulSB said:


> Logs me out at every visit despite requesting other wise.



Do you have Private browsing turned on in Safari? I had the same problem but turning off Private browsing fixed it.

For me, the biggest advantage of Tapatalk is having menu items rendered in usable size in a pop-up sidebar, which also has the benefit of keeping them out of the way when they aren't needed. It would be possible to replicate that in Safari but it would be a lot of work and it would be unfair to expect it of Shaun unless we started paying him the going rate for his time.


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## shouldbeinbed (13 Nov 2013)

I've used it on an iphone 4 and currently on a Nokia 925 with windows mobile OS and it is spot on on both. It formats, fits & works without any fiddling or settings to make. I very rarely venture onto a regular computer these days for posting stuff and much prefer the post tapatalk experience.


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## shouldbeinbed (13 Nov 2013)

PaulSB said:


> Yep that would cover much of it. For example
> 
> 1) if I hit the topic title text 90% of the time it opens up the poster's profile because if one doesn't hit the title precisely there's a tendency for the finger to get a greater contact with the user name below.
> 
> ...



1) thats a bit sausage fingers (and something I'm guilty of regularly too), as with the dinky full qwerty keyboard, a fraction more care and precision is often well rewarded.
Also, in your phone settings there may be a screen sensitivity option where you can set it super sensitive with a sensitivity field triggering just above the actual screen to respond to a gloved hand touch, this would respond to a naked finger too and trigger the part you're hovering over just before you actually do touch onto the piece of screen you expect to open.

2) again settings - check you've enabled cookies on your phone so it knows from visit to visit what you want it to do, also remember if you delete your history or have the option to set an auto delete it is not as sophisticated as a big computer with options to just clear browsing or cached pages but still remember passwords and preferences, it will most likely just clear everything regardless and you would see it as having spontaneously forgotten what you want it to do.

3) I've yet to posess a smartphone that doesn't have an integral back button or quite comprehensive internet page history that works well inside multiple paged sites like CC. Why would people needing to provide a pared down site for a vastly less resourced and less powerful handheld devce with several other distinct uses need to clutter itself with duplications of basic smartphone functionality?


sometimes it just needs a little bit of thought around the compromises & some lowered expectation that the tiny hand sized multi function device with a relative pittance of memory & content modified from a far different platform that you are criticising is not directly comparable with a few hundred to a few thousand quids worth of PC, Mac or Linux full size device thats only function is to be a computer.


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## ColinJ (13 Nov 2013)

shouldbeinbed said:


> sometimes it just needs a little bit of thought around the compromises & some lowered expectation that the tiny hand sized multi function device with a relative pittance of memory & content modified from a far different platform that you are criticising is not directly comparable with a few hundred to a few thousand quids worth of PC, Mac or Linux full size device thats only function is to be a computer.


But that isn't what they are doing ... They are complaining about it not working now the way it did before _*on the same phone*_!

I never used Tapatalk so I don't have an opinion about that. I do think that the new mobile view works pretty well. My eyesight isn't brilliant, and my phone's screen is tiny, but I can use it on CC now.


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## smutchin (13 Nov 2013)

shouldbeinbed said:


> sometimes it just needs a little bit of thought around the compromises & some lowered expectation



That's rather patronising.

Yes, I get it. A mere few years ago, the very idea of being able to browse a web forum on a tiny handheld device would have sounded like something out of Star Trek. How quickly we get used to these things and take them for granted.

But in this case, our expectations are not unrealistic - thanks to Tapatalk, we've become accustomed to the neat functionality of a dedicated forum interface designed to make the best use of a small screen. We're having to lower our expectations to account for a change for the worse, not an unreasonable demand for the impossible.

Notwithstanding that we understand and accept the reasons for the change.


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## shouldbeinbed (13 Nov 2013)

ColinJ said:


> But that isn't what they are doing ... They are complaining about it not working now the way it did before _*on the same phone*_!
> 
> I never used Tapatalk so I don't have an opinion about that. I do think that the new mobile view works pretty well. My eyesight isn't brilliant, and my phone's screen is tiny, but I can use it on CC now.



Ok but it's a bit comapring apples to oranges, tapatalk to the usual site on a small screen. The look and functionality presented in tapatalk was quite a bit different to the way it looks now and I suppose worked for some more than others and vice verca.


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## ColinJ (13 Nov 2013)

I just watched this Tapatalk review to get an idea of how it worked ...



I can see that it would have been pretty simple to use. 

Still ... I just had another go at using my phone to access CC using its new responsive view. It did feel quite hard to use in portrait mode, but rotating it to landscape mode made it much better because everything spreads out across the screen. I don't think I would have any problem using it on phones with screens 4+" in size. I definitely need my reading glasses on my 3.3" screen, and prefer using a stylus, though I got away with using my fingers just now.


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## shouldbeinbed (13 Nov 2013)

smutchin said:


> That's rather patronising.



My apologies to PaulSB if offended, it wasn't intended that way at all, I was trying to chuck in a few suggestions that my be causing some of the complaints he raises.



smutchin said:


> Yes, I get it. A mere few years ago, the very idea of being able to browse a web forum on a tiny handheld device would have sounded like something out of Star Trek. How quickly we get used to these things and take them for granted.
> 
> But in this case, our expectations are not unrealistic - thanks to Tapatalk, we've become accustomed to the neat functionality of a dedicated forum interface designed to make the best use of a small screen. We're having to lower our expectations to account for a change for the worse, not an unreasonable demand for the impossible.
> 
> Notwithstanding that we understand and accept the reasons for the change.



A change for the worse in your opinion, as it is entirely fine in my opinion. I used tapatalk, I even paid for it, but I really didn't rate it at all, I went that way because I got sick to death of being mithered when I tried accessing the web versions of different forums and always got the 'we've got a tapatalk site' nag screens.

Tapatalk ilooked like a different entity cutting up and sticking the forum back together in a diferent packet & presentation of the site, I spotted the notice Shaun put out in the pet forum, it didn't go into detail of the particular reasons so I don't know if it was dissected in more detail here, but it came across that it was getting far harder for him to enable both this entire site and the tapatalk entity of it to happily coexist. I may be reading between the lines a bit but I suspect either the big forum or the tapatalk incarnation of it would have changed for the worse to keep both going.

anyhow on this one I'm quite happy, you're clearly not. I'm sure on other threads it'll be the other way round. Again, apologies to any tapatalk fans that took offence at what I hoped was constructive comment.


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## smutchin (13 Nov 2013)

shouldbeinbed said:


> A change for the worse in your opinion



Yes, that is my opinion. As I said upthread: YMMV. The point of the thread was never meant to be a poll on people's views of forum usability.


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## shouldbeinbed (13 Nov 2013)

smutchin said:


> Yes, that is my opinion. As I said upthread: YMMV. *The point of the thread was never meant to be a poll on people's views of forum usability*.



YMMV? sorry I'm not hot on TLA's or even FLA's

The post I initially repsonded to is exactly* that* though, and you've entered into the same spirit by engaging in the discussion, unbidden, sharing what you enjoyed of tapatalks functionality that you feel you've now lost. Rather harsh don't you think to then flip it with a hugely selective quote and and have a dig? You do seem remarkably sensitive or determined to be unneccesarily hostile over this.


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## smutchin (13 Nov 2013)

Don't mistake terseness for hostility. I just CBA repeating myself at length. Don't mistake verbosity for usefulness either. We're not paid by the word here. 

Shaun and ColinJ answered my original query between them - a dull technical query of narrow scope. Let's just move on, hm?


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## Shaun (13 Nov 2013)

Have you tried it via an alternative browser - Chrome for example?


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## ColinJ (13 Nov 2013)

That is what my phone displays in landscape mode.


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## Shaun (13 Nov 2013)

Thanks. I think we've established that lots of people find the mobile view okay to use, however @smutchin is finding it less useable so let's try to suggest things he could do to improve _his_ experience.

Ultimately he may not find the mobile view to his liking - which is okay - I accepted that may be the case for a few people when I removed Tapatalk.


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## potsy (13 Nov 2013)

I was a little disappointed initially but am finding it much better since switching my browser to Chrome, no more weird jumping about of the cursor when replying, or jumbled up quotes


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## ColinJ (13 Nov 2013)

Shaun said:


> Thanks. I think we've established that lots of people find the mobile view okay to use, however @smutchin is finding it less useable so let's try to suggest things he could do to improve _his_ experience.


Er, ok, in case it wasn't obvious enough ...

I get on fine with the Opera Mobile browser, I've shown what CycleChat now looks like in it, and it is available for iPhone as well as Android, so how about giving that a try @smutchin?


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## smutchin (14 Nov 2013)

Thanks for the suggestions, chaps. Tbh, I hadn't thought of trying a different browser for the simple reason that I didn't know such things were available for iPhone without jailbreaking (they weren't last time I looked).

Never been a huge fan of desktop Chrome but I'll try the mobile version. And I've just found Puffin, which looks interesting so I'll give it a try and report back. And I'll try Mercury and Opera too. 

Ultimately, I doubt any generic browser is ever going to truly replace a dedicated app's features, but... well, that's ok, I can live with it.


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