The mobile version of this site

[Jason Dunn]

<a href="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/pocket">http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/pocket</a><br /><br />So you're looking for something that's fast loading, ad free (for now), and more like the previous version of this site? Check out the mobile version of the site with your desktop browser. When you visit this site on a Pocket PC, it will automatically re-direct to that version (it also sniffs for AvantGo and Mazingo). If you're using Netscape 4.x or another browser that doesn't quite render the site properly, give that "lite" version a try while we work out the kinks in our design. Thanks for your patience!

[bbarker]

Looks good for mobile! Works fine on my Jornada.

Except, of course, the forums. They still don't work on a Pocket PC screen and there's no "print topic" option to make it readable (if not "replyable"). But I know that's not supposed to be ready yet.

:D The main page is good. I won't mind the ads when they come, either, if they help support it.

What are the major design considerations for the mobile forum pages? I assume you'll get rid of the frames, the name/avitar column on the left, perhaps the avitar (or make it optional?), etc.

I think you're doing great.

[Mobile Bob]

The front page of the mobile version looks great. Loads fast. Looking forward to the mobile version of the forums. :)

[Eastwood]

The mobile Version of PocketPCThoughts is much better than the old one!

I always hated it to scroll horizontally because of the Ad on top... :cry:

But now everything is fine! :D

[sesummers]

THANK YOU! The Mobile site lets me increase the font size!

The only problem I have with your new site is that the font size is fixed (doesn't obey the Text Size setting in Internet Explorer), and is TOO SMALL. I run 17" monitors (LCD's) at 1280x1024, so the pixels are pretty tiny, and the font is only 9 pixels high.

It's really annoying how more and more sites are using fixed size fonts rather than allowing the stuff to be rendered locally. The idea of HTML was to let the site specify content and let the local system do the formatting. Sites that do that work great on Pocket PCs. Those that don't are unusable.

I use "Large fonts" mode, so normally if a font is specified in points, Windows will scale it to about 25% larger than normal on my system. But when a font size is hard-coded in IE, it is a fixed number of pixels high, and that makes it too small.

If you insist on not using variable sized fonts, can you at least bump up the size by a pixel or three? Those of us who are over 40 will really appreciate it.

[lord_darkside]

I asked this question in an earlier post, but it quickly filled up with kudos to the site.

Can someone point me in the direction of some info on how to create a sniffer that will point a user to a Mobile browser? I understand how to send one user to a flavour of IE, and another flavour of Netscape designed site, I'm just looking for the codebase that you have to sniff for to send someone to a pocket PC site.

Thanks!

[Woodster]

I use this as the site I visit even on my Desktop. This is what the desktop re-design version should had been. Clean, clear, and fast-loading. Not too much "junk" in the navigation like on the current re-design.

[Mike Wagstaff]

Can someone point me in the direction of some info on how to create a sniffer that will point a user to a Mobile browser? I understand how to send one user to a flavour of IE, and another flavour of Netscape designed site, I'm just looking for the codebase that you have to sniff for to send someone to a pocket PC site.
Here's some PHP that I use on my site:
&lt;?php
$browser = strtolower($HTTP_USER_AGENT);
$avantgo = 'avantgo';
$pocketpc = 'windows ce';
$foliage = 'wince';
$mazingo = 'mazingo';
$match_browser_a = strpos($browser, $avantgo);
$match_browser_p = strpos($browser, $pocketpc); $match_browser_f = strpos($browser, $foliage); $match_browser_m = strpos($browser, $mazingo);
if($match_browser_a !== false | $match_browser_p !== false | $match_browser_f !== false | $match_browser_m !== false) $mobile = 1;
?>
Basically, what it does is sniff out the browser information (so it can still be fooled with registry hacks). I've made it so that if an AvantGo/Mazingo client, or a browser that identifies itself as "Windows CE" or "WinCE", is detected, then the $mobile variable is set to 1. That way, you can have conditional code further on down your page to display different items/layouts depending on whether you want to optimise for a mobile display or not.

I can't take credit for the above code, by the way. It originally came to me courtesy of Chris Edwards (of PocketMatrix (http://www.pocketmatrix.com/) fame), and I've since tinkered with it slightly.

[tonyv]

The mobile site is great -- it loads in less than a second on my 500 mhz laptop with 56 kbps modem. The new site is incredibly slow to load, taking over 17 seconds!!!! That's really unworkable, in my opinion.

[Brad Adrian]

The mobile site is great -- it loads in less than a second on my 500 mhz laptop with 56 kbps modem. The new site is incredibly slow to load, taking over 17 seconds!!!! That's really unworkable, in my opinion.
Really? On my PC, it loads FASTER than the former version.

[dhoward]

Jason,

I like the tight look on my 3955. What a pleasure to read, and not to have to fight the ads.

"Give me the news...just the news."

'At-a-boy!

david
dallas

[puithove]

I really appreciate that this is clean and quick. Looks great. However, since I read this more on my PPC than on my desktop, it would be nice to have it span more than one day. I often don't check the site on the weekends. Before when it had 3 days of info I was able to quickly catch up. If 3 is to much, can we compromise and go for 2? :?:

[palmsolo]

I love this site and would read it every day on the bus ride home, but boy oh boy was it slow on Mazingo before. I would tap the link and have to wait a couple minutes for the page to finish loading. Now, I tap on it and Zing! there it is. Hurray!!!!!

I can't wait until the Pocket PC version of the forums is rolled out. Keep up the great work guys.

[texeck]

The front page looks great - the forums, on the other hand... :x . Overall nice job on the new site Jason. Will continue "lurking"... :D

[Robotbeat]

How about text-based adds? different is good...

(text-based adds aren't as effective on PCs, but on PPCs, the text is bigger and the loading time is longer, so likely text-based ads are feasible)

[Robotbeat]

I changed my mind... text-based ads wouldn't work. Little ads would, though.

[palmsolo]

The main page looks great on my 568, but the forums still require scrolling. However, I am typing this response on my Sidekick and both the main page and forums work great! Danger rocks!!!!!!!

[TeQuilYa]

However, since I read this more on my PPC than on my desktop, it would be nice to have it span more than one day. :

I second wanting more days on the PPC version. I often miss a day or two and need to catch up. Perhaps our preference for how many days to show can be set in a cookie or something?

[ZATZAi]

I too would like to have more days, why not have a link on the bottom of the page to "Yesterday's News" so the user can tell Pocket IE, or Avantgo, or MAzingo to download 1 link deep and then they can get todays news, and yesterdays news, and since its a link, the site should still load fast. Then on the bottom of Yesterdays news you can have a link to "Past News", same idea as before but just the 3rd day, then don't go past that. I'm sure you could set the PHP to do that, then the user can customize how much they download by how many links deep they go.

Also, when will the forum be PPC compliant? How bout making a seperate one just for the PPC if its to hard to do? Or maybe, a PocketPCThoughts.Com list serv, hmm? :) Pretty Please :)