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Google to Hacker News: Not Mobile-Friendly

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Re: Google to Hacker News: Not Mobile-Friendly

#21

Post by tobyhinloopen »

moepstar wrote: post #10
timthelion wrote: post #4

This is a great example of why mobile browsers suck. It is the job of the mobile browser to be able to fix these problems automatically, to resize and reflow text so that it displays properly on the device.

^this. And: It pisses me off to no end that Google is in the position to decide how a site has to look like on $device. They announce that you will get a worse SERP if your site doesn't do X and everyone scrambles to please mighty G. If they decide that every site has to have a yellow background, starting next week, what will you do? Give in?

Google makes these kinds of decisions to improve their service: Finding the information you need. If you look up some information about bananas on your 4" touchscreen device and 2 sites provide info on them: A mobile site and a "regular" website, I want the mobile/responsive website, not the "regular" one.

Re: Google to Hacker News: Not Mobile-Friendly

#22

Post by gcatalfamo »

I see 3 schools of thought: 1) HN should be more mobile-friendly, so I can read it. 2) HN should be more of a platform on top of which users can build tools to use it, so let's build one. 3) Why not both?

I think both iOS and Android have already a plethora of user-made apps. (some of them ok, some of them not ok)

On a tablet i prefer the HN website to any of the apps currently available. On a phone, I think there are a few good Android apps and no good enough iOS apps...

What is the best HN experience on mobile? I think there's need for better understanding of what we "want" from mobile, apart from the obvious things (i.e. readability)

Re: Google to Hacker News: Not Mobile-Friendly

#23

Post by jacquesm »

JDiculous wrote: post #18

It still blows my mind that the text on the HN homepage is unreadably too small on my Samsung Galaxy S4. Surely you guys have enough money and/or technical chops to fix that?

The Galaxy S4 came out well after HN was built, why should the burden be on HN, why don't you say 'Surely Samsung would have the money and/or technical chops to make a product compatible with the web as existed prior to when the device was launched?'.

edit: hello downvoters, would you be equally upset that a windows 95 machine would refuse to run office 2000?

Re: Google to Hacker News: Not Mobile-Friendly

#25

Post by jamespo »

jacquesm wrote: post #23
JDiculous wrote: post #18

It still blows my mind that the text on the HN homepage is unreadably too small on my Samsung Galaxy S4. Surely you guys have enough money and/or technical chops to fix that?

The Galaxy S4 came out well after HN was built, why should the burden be on HN, why don't you say 'Surely Samsung would have the money and/or technical chops to make a product compatible with the web as existed prior to when the device was launched?'. edit: hello downvoters, would you be equally upset that a windows 95 machine would refuse to run office 2000?

Maybe the S10 will have a 12" screen

Re: Google to Hacker News: Not Mobile-Friendly

#26

Post by enraged_camel »

eps wrote: post #24
JDiculous wrote: post #18

It still blows my mind that the text on the HN homepage is unreadably too small on my Samsung Galaxy S4. Surely you guys have enough money and/or technical chops to fix that?

It's obviously not a matter of money/chops, but that of the priorities.

Sure, but how hard is it to write some basic CSS? I mean we are talking about making the text bigger when viewed on mobile devices, right?

Re: Google to Hacker News: Not Mobile-Friendly

#27

Post by jacquesm »

jamespo wrote: post #25
jacquesm wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Galaxy S4 came out well after HN was built, why should the burden be on HN, why don't you say 'Surely Samsung would have the money and/or technical chops to make a product compatible with the web as existed prior to when the device was launched?'. edit: hello downvoters, would you be equally upset that a windows 95 machine would refuse to run office 2000?

Maybe the S10 will have a 12" screen

It might, who knows. The compatibility onus is on the device manufacturers, not on the websites. That's the world upside down.

Re: Google to Hacker News: Not Mobile-Friendly

#28

Post by [deleted] »

jacquesm wrote: post #23
JDiculous wrote: post #18

It still blows my mind that the text on the HN homepage is unreadably too small on my Samsung Galaxy S4. Surely you guys have enough money and/or technical chops to fix that?

The Galaxy S4 came out well after HN was built, why should the burden be on HN, why don't you say 'Surely Samsung would have the money and/or technical chops to make a product compatible with the web as existed prior to when the device was launched?'. edit: hello downvoters, would you be equally upset that a windows 95 machine would refuse to run office 2000?

[deleted]

Re: Google to Hacker News: Not Mobile-Friendly

#30

Post by Sun2Sun »

jacquesm wrote: post #19

The whole 'not mobile friendly' meme really needs to die. The sites are never at fault, a mobile browser is entirely capable of rendering sites however they see fit and to ignore or incorporate any or all elements of the style sheets and mark-up that a site supplies. The pixel-perfect coupling that people expect between what a site should look like according to the designers and how that site is rendered by the brows…

When I switch to "no style" in Firefox, HN becomes pretty responsive. The only 2 problems I can see are that the textarea on top still has a fixed width and that the comments are not indented.

Mobile browsers should offer a custom style option, or at least a "no style" option like FF does.

Sidenote: Is it possible at all to have horizontal scrolling websites that Google consideres mobile friendly? Some websites are intended to have a horizontal scroll. What are they supposed to do?

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