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Google to Hacker News: Not Mobile-Friendly

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Re: Google to Hacker News: Not Mobile-Friendly

#41

Post by MrSwagga »

nness wrote: post #6

I didn't think that was ever in doubt, was it? HN has always been difficult to use on mobile devices due to all the fixed dimensions forcing the page to render at an unsuitable size.

HN doesn't really use fixed dimensions.

If you resize desktop browser window you see that is scales well. The width is set to 85%.

I assume that most popular mobile web browsers render HN the same. This could mean that there are some standards for mobile devices that make it look as bad as it is. Unless you are someone who really wants to and can change the standard I assume that you start complying with it. :)

Re: Google to Hacker News: Not Mobile-Friendly

#42

Post by jacquesm »

mnem wrote: post #38
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…

It's not about being backwardly compatible (by and large most mobile browsers do a sterling job of that), it's about "friendly", which is to say, something which works fairly well with common mobile devices. HN has pretty tiny fonts and very small hit areas for fat human fingers. Mobile friendly isn't a meme, it's just a description of how well your chosen presentation of content translates into a different context o…

Font sizes are hints that can (and should, when appropriate) be overruled locally.

Shifting the layout burden to content supplied (and or javascript) was/is a huge mistake, the browser on the device should do the layout using whatever style hints it feels are appropriate.

Re: Google to Hacker News: Not Mobile-Friendly

#43

Post by thameera »

gcatalfamo wrote: post #22

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 ar…

I'm yet to come across a good iOS app for HN that is both visually pleasing and is not just a reader (i.e. lets me submit/post comments).

Re: Google to Hacker News: Not Mobile-Friendly

#44

Post by edent »

thameera wrote: post #31
aw3c2 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apart from accidental downvoting I never had any problems with it. Get a browser that nicely reflows and that locks horizontal scrolling nicely (not too much, not too little) and it's a breeze to read and participate. I love that I can choose the font-size and zoom level myself, notblindthankyouverymuch.

What mobile browser do you use?

I use Opera on Android. Reflow text is in the settings menu.

Re: Google to Hacker News: Not Mobile-Friendly

#45

Post by jay_kyburz »

tobyhinloopen wrote: post #17
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.

They should not. A mobile browser should follow standards defined by people who thought about this kind of stuff. Mobile browsers render "desktop-designed" webpages this way because they should so according to the HTML/CSS/JS specs. As a developer, you should define which content should scale and/or resize according to browser viewport width and pixel density: Better known as "Responsive".

Agree wholeheartedly, nothing more annoying than a mobile browser thinking it knows better than the site designer.

Mobile browser should render the page exactly how the designer specified.

Re: Google to Hacker News: Not Mobile-Friendly

#46

Post by vacri »

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…

The up/downvote buttons on HN are an example of 'not mobile friendly'. They work fine with a pointer, but not with a touchscreen - you often see someone apologise for downmodding when they meant to upmod, because of this problem.

Pointer-driven UI and touchscreen UI have different local maxima. One of the reasons Ubuntu's Unity looks like it does is because they intend for it to look and work well on both UI types.

Re: Google to Hacker News: Not Mobile-Friendly

#47

Post by dustinleblanc »

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…

Its up to the person who wrote the site stylesheet to make it behave in this instance. It's not Safari, or Chrome, or FF, or Dolphin that made me declare that my text should be this big or that my div should be that wide no matter the context. I am capable of writing css that adapts; if I choose not to, my site is less readable. Writing a web browser that makes those decisions for me would make my job of designing the site harder, not easier.

Perhaps an alternative would be some declaration that says "Hey render me this way if you feel like it, but use these all powerful browser supplied styles if I become unreadable"

Some browser's have implemented that reading mode (safari?) and it seems like a cool idea, but I think it only works if you provide really good HTML5 markup.

Re: Google to Hacker News: Not Mobile-Friendly

#48

Post by andybak »

To everyone saying "browsers should fix this - not site owners"

How many possible ways is there for a site to make itself hard to read on a small screen?

How many rules would a mobile browser need to have to handle them all?

How smart would these rules need to be to distinguish between intentional and unintentional design decisions?

It's beyond question that websites should be coded in such a way that they works on a range of devices screen sizes. Anything else is madness.

Re: Google to Hacker News: Not Mobile-Friendly

#49

Post by nfm »

jacquesm wrote: post #42
mnem wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about being backwardly compatible (by and large most mobile browsers do a sterling job of that), it's about "friendly", which is to say, something which works fairly well with common mobile devices. HN has pretty tiny fonts and very small hit areas for fat human fingers. Mobile friendly isn't a meme, it's just a description of how well your chosen presentation of content translates into a different context o…

Font sizes are hints that can (and should, when appropriate) be overruled locally. Shifting the layout burden to content supplied (and or javascript) was/is a huge mistake, the browser on the device should do the layout using whatever style hints it feels are appropriate.

Do you think that's a problem that can be solved generically by the browser? It seems infeasible to me.
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