Mobile friendly

[Killipso]

Hello, I've a question... or suggestion? Can this forum be switched to a mobile friendly service? Do the providers offer that as part of the free service? Or, is that already available and I just haven't found a particular link or app? I use my phone for web access 90% of the time and accessing the forum is hard like this as the user interface is not mobile friendly by default. I'm very interested to know if there is anything that can be done. Regards Raif

[Doug]

Raif,

It is a function already built into the SMF forum software. If a mobile device is detected, the forum will open in a stripped down version. Like an all text-driven outline, with graphics stripped away to minimize data transmission. You will not see pictures in the post either. I was using this in 2010 with my old Blackberry (roller wheel and QWERTY keyboard) to keep tabs on the Forum. It was a bit of a pain, as there were big gaps between the menus a lot of scrolling was required, but served in a pinch while traveling.



If you scroll down to the bottom of the home page on your mobile, you should see some sort of link that says 'go to full version'. When I upgraded to a new Blackberry with touch screen; bigger graphic area, and faster 4G network, this is the mode I used. It then displayed like a miniature version of the forum, virtually the same as you see on your PC. The zoom and pan functions of you mobile touch screen are needed to see any detail though. This is the mode that I used 2012 to 2014. I forget what I did to make it open in that mode all the time. I have not used it since as I got rid of the Blackberry in early 2014 and switched to a simple mobile phone (without a data plan).

Here it is in the 'lightweight', stripped down mode on the Blackberry Torch.



And here it is in full mode.



Zoomed in to maximum. Usually you did not need to zoom this far to select links. Depends on how fat your fingers are...




-Doug


[add pictures. 29Aug16, Doug]

[Killipso]

Thanks for the update  Doug. It looks like the mobile versioning is not mobile or small screen friendly. In your words, a pain. Oh well. Not easy to reply while on bus to work ;-) I wonder if there are any other solutions...

Regards,
Raif

[Dave]

Raif,

Currently I believe there are three mobile protocols supported wap, wap2 and imode.

Some links to more info about these...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Application_Protocol
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-mode

You can display these on any device (mobile or not) by appending the protocol name to the URL eg
https://www.douglasmotorcycles.net/index.php?wap
https://www.douglasmotorcycles.net/index.php?wap2
https://www.douglasmotorcycles.net/index.php?imode

Click on any of the above to see what they look like.

Once a protocol has been selected by this method, additional pages opened will use the same protocol.

As Doug said, your device should be automatically be detected by the Forum software and switch to the appropriate protocol.
However, you may find one works better than the others.

However I think these protocols may be a little dated now. There are some newer options but they appear to be a little buggy and could be more trouble than they are worth.
There may also be some newer options involving buying additional software to be installed on the server. I will have to investigate these further.

Could you try each of the three protocols please and see if any are usable on your device?
I don't use a web enabled phone so it makes testing a bit tricky.

Dave