Forum Mobile Site Updated

[EEVblog]

The forum mobile site plugin (SMF4mobile) has been upgraded. It was hugely out of date! As in v1.0 to 2.5.4
Probably a large number of changes since then.

[0culus]

Hmmm, so I tried logging in on my phone, and apparently the *old* mobile site is still working? It also will not allow me to log in. The error page shown occurs when I try to log in.

[EEVblog]

Hmmm, so I tried logging in on my phone, and apparently the *old* mobile site is still working? It also will not allow me to log in. The error page shown occurs when I try to log in.

Not sure why it shows v1.1.5. Anyway it used to show 1.0, so it's certainly the updated site.

[0culus]

OK, but it still won't allow me to login. Not that I consume the forum often from my phone, but figure it might be a bug others are experiencing. Or maybe I'm just a special snowflake. 

[EEVblog]

Turns out I didn't have the mobile theme installed, so that's done now and old one removed. So now running the latest SMF4MOBILE code core and theme. The mobile website will now look substantially different.
No idea why you can't log in, try again?

[beanflying]

Just tried and I the default is for the full site. With my phone I seemed to get the old mobile site maybe 1 in three times and the full site on the others. I generally switched to the full site anyway as it gives more options when posting and adding attachments.

Tried entering the site on about 10 times on my phone from links, saved bookmark and google search and it is still defaulting to the full site. Something is amiss with the Auto Detect 

[greenpossum]

Where is the mark all unread posts as read action now?

[EEVblog]

Where is the mark all unread posts as read action now?

Sorry, don't know, I rarely use the mobile site myself.

[james_s]

Yuck, as a heavy user of the mobile forum this is NOT an improvement. Attack of the flat design fad, low contrast light gray with lighter gray, that awful garish solid blue everywhere and I can't seem to scroll without the topics I'm scrolling past lighting up blue as I touch to drag them. MASSIVE font that looks almost twice the size as it was requiring more scrolling. Controls moved around for no apparent reason. Might have to get used to using the full site on my phone, or find something else to do while I'm on the bus.

Seems all the UI/UX designers vanished around the time Windows 8 appeared and despite being wildly unpopular the UI trends it introduced have spread everywhere. massive seas of white space, ever decreasing information density and little to separate different parts of an interface is still all the rage.

[HwAoRrDk]

MASSIVE font that looks almost twice the size as it was requiring more scrolling.

Yeah, why does the text have to be so large? I don't like that at all. The previous mobile theme was just right in that respect.

It seems to be a thing for 'mobile-friendly' web site layouts to have excessively large text. It's unwarranted in my opinion. I mean, do the people who make these design choices think we're all long-sighted and hold our phones at arm's length? Anyone who really is in need of larger text can always increase the text scaling in their browser settings.

Other than that, I think the new mobile theme is fairly good. Although, user profile pages still don't show a user's country (it can often be helpful to know where in the world someone is when replying to them).

[greenpossum]

Where is the mark all unread posts as read action now?

Sorry, don't know, I rarely use the mobile site myself.

Well that's a retrograde step then. It was useful to mark everything read on mobile, then I don't see them again on the mobile or desktop.

[Fred27]

I agree that "mark all as read" is essential. The new layout I'm not bothered one way or the other.

[james_s]

I've played with it a bit more and come to the conclusion that the mobile interface is unusable now. I've switched to the full site for now but that is only marginally better on a mobile device.

If it ain't broke, fix it till it is.

[EEVblog]

I have to update to the latest version to keep up with bug fixes. I'll talk to the developer

[Ranayna]

Security updates are indeed important. If those would not often break or change functionality, they would be way more accepted though
I cannot say that I like the new mobile design, the contrasts in the topic list are bad, there is overlapping text, and there is still functionality missing. And I personally cannot stand the flat design philosophy...

Regarding the big difference in look and feel between mobile and desktop site, I have seen several forums (fora  ) that have switched to XenForo, which in my opinion has an incredibly seamless mobile integration.
Are there any plans of looking at more current forum software?

[rsjsouza]

Yuck, as a heavy user of the mobile forum this is NOT an improvement. Attack of the flat design fad, low contrast light gray with lighter gray, that awful garish solid blue everywhere and I can't seem to scroll without the topics I'm scrolling past lighting up blue as I touch to drag them.

I have to agree to that; the flat view and lack of clear distinction between posts is a bit of a turnoff. However, I can now click on a user and see its information much clearer (the thing I like the best is the location information, but stats and other things are quite nice as well). I also like the "Full Site" icon in more convenient places. 

MASSIVE font that looks almost twice the size as it was requiring more scrolling. Controls moved around for no apparent reason. Might have to get used to using the full site on my phone, or find something else to do while I'm on the bus.

I love the larger fonts - my eyesight is not what it used to be. The mobile browsers did not scale at all on my phone (FF, Chrome) and I always had to zoom in, drag, drag, drag, zoom out, then zoom in again, drag, drag, drag... It was crap.

Although I see the case for letting the user select the size of font on the mobile version.

[0culus]

Turns out I didn't have the mobile theme installed, so that's done now and old one removed. So now running the latest SMF4MOBILE code core and theme. The mobile website will now look substantially different.
No idea why you can't log in, try again?

Works for me now, and I'm seeing the new look. 

[Bud]

I am shaking in my boots waiting when the main desktop site will go down the drain with the mandatory flat interface.

[EEVblog]

I am shaking in my boots waiting when the main desktop site will go down the drain with the mandatory flat interface.

 

[EEVblog]

Regarding the big difference in look and feel between mobile and desktop site, I have seen several forums (fora  ) that have switched to XenForo, which in my opinion has an incredibly seamless mobile integration. Are there any plans of looking at more current forum software?

I agree about XenoForo, it's my favorite, I use it on several other forums I contribute to.
If I was to switch then it would be to that, but no plans for that. People hate change, they absolutely despise it, the uproar would be enormous if I changed forum software.
I guarantee that if I did a user poll it would be a resounding NO for change.

[donkey77]

Yes, I don't like change either but I guess you get used to a new design. It's the functionality that's the issue for me. The update now opens each group automatically, ie beginners, products, computing etc meaning you need to scroll a lot more or minimize each time. The most frustrating thing though is if you open an attachment/photo and then go back, instead of returning to where you were in the page at goes back to the top of it. A pain in the arse if you were down near the bottom of the thread.

[cgroen]

Yes, I don't like change either but I guess you get used to a new design. It's the functionality that's the issue for me. The update now opens each group automatically, ie beginners, products, computing etc meaning you need to scroll a lot more or minimize each time. The most frustrating thing though is if you open an attachment/photo and then go back, instead of returning to where you were in the page at goes back to the top of it. A pain in the arse if you were down near the bottom of the thread.

Thats also my main issue with the new version
I use always the "recent unread topics", and then I scroll down, when I then see something interesting, clicks on it, reads the posts and clicks "back", I will return to the top of the page. The old version would get me exactly at the same spot so I could just scroll on from there. Very annoying.

[beanflying]

Like all SMF themes they can be tweaked with TIME and EFFORT and some coding skills so adding back in features is possible. I would prefer for example a Dark theme as an option for PC use but I know how much time is involved to keep one theme looking good let alone adding another so I will make do.

Not sure if the Site still has the Tapatalk plugin installed or if it is worth looking at again/now?

[tautech]

Not sure if the Site still has the Tapatalk plugin installed or if it is worth looking at again/now?

Dave ditched it a few months back IIRC but it might be still installed. 

[thinkfat]

Yes, I don't like change either but I guess you get used to a new design. It's the functionality that's the issue for me. The update now opens each group automatically, ie beginners, products, computing etc meaning you need to scroll a lot more or minimize each time. The most frustrating thing though is if you open an attachment/photo and then go back, instead of returning to where you were in the page at goes back to the top of it. A pain in the arse if you were down near the bottom of the thread.

Thats also my main issue with the new version
I use always the "recent unread topics", and then I scroll down, when I then see something interesting, clicks on it, reads the posts and clicks "back", I will return to the top of the page. The old version would get me exactly at the same spot so I could just scroll on from there. Very annoying.

For me it works just like that, Chrome on Android.