Mobile view

[smutchin]

[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.

 

[smutchin]

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.

 

[threebikesmcginty]

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

 

[threebikesmcginty]

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




*is that a word?

 

[smutchin]

Yes and yes.

 

[PaulSB]

[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.

 

[smutchin]

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.

 

[shouldbeinbed]

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.

 

[shouldbeinbed]

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.

2) Logs me out at every visit despite requesting other wise.

3) There is no apparent back button..

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.

 

[ColinJ]

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.

 

[smutchin]

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.

 

[shouldbeinbed]

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.

 

[ColinJ]

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.

 

[shouldbeinbed]

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.

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.

 

[smutchin]

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.