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Handhelds Slashdot.org

Slashdot Mobile: Now For Tablets As Well As Phones 123

Posted by timothy from the ensmallening dept.
Gaurav Kuchhal (Head of Product, Slashdot) writes "Slashdot Mobile has finally made it out of the gates for tablets as well as phones. The Mobile site for phones launched some weeks back, but now you can take advantage of the changes we've made to read Slashdot easier to read through touch-screen devices on tablets as well as phones. That includes features we've folded in to the mobile version from the desktop-browser view of the site, so you can scan user profiles, sip from the Firehose, and keep up with notifications. See this blog post for more details, and keep the feedback coming. If you see a problem, please tell us about it!"
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Slashdot Mobile: Now For Tablets As Well As Phones More

Slashdot Mobile: Now For Tablets As Well As Phones

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  • Nice work (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    FP> Glad to see you's guys finally going mobile. Keep up the good work!

  • Some of those features seem pretty useful, especially notification of replies. Will they be added to the regular, non-mobile/tablet version of the website as well?

    • Some of those features seem pretty useful, especially notification of replies. Will they be added to the regular, non-mobile/tablet version of the website as well?

      It's already there and has been for quite a long time. Go turn it on in your settings.

  • Question (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Serious question. Why did you create a separate web site rather than just use a different stylesheet with the "handheld" css media type?

    • Re:Question (Score:5, Informative)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Tuesday November 27, 2012 @02:16PM (#42107941) Homepage Journal

      Serious question. Why did you create a separate web site rather than just use a different stylesheet with the "handheld" css media type?

      because they're realistic? name one complex forum type of site for which the different stylesheet approach works?

      this saves memory on the handheld sites - or at least makes it simpler for deciding which javascript to load to make the site function(and in which way).
      or at least should.

      (mobile browsers have different quirks and so forth.. and it's good if you can have the option of deciding which to go to. also some tablets run desktop os's and browsers..)

  • you get past the "your device\browser is not supported" page

    • I found this pretty stupid. Instead of listing supported devices manually, make a standards compliant tablet-oriented website, and if it fails for some non-compliant browser, blame it.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by alci63 ( 1856480 )
      Yes. Not supporting uncommon but probably perfectly capable device/browser is quite weird for geek oriented site ! What about the nokia N9 for example ? (with native webkit based browser, or with firefox, both work fine after you pass this stupid "Optimized for IE" style page...)
      • This is good feedback, thanks. It's not that the site won't work (it is standards-compliant), it's that we have a finite amount of devices to test with, and those are on the 'supported' list. Once we go live, I'll remove this screen.

  • Does not work without javascript (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Nice design.. but does not work wihout javascript enabled.

  • My tablet has higher resolution than many laptops sold today, so I'm not interested in a different layout.

    Regardless, I'd like to choose whether the mobile or normal layout is shown.

    • Re:Tablet is HIGHER resolution than many laptops (Score:5, Insightful)

      by green1 ( 322787 ) on Tuesday November 27, 2012 @02:34PM (#42108107)

      Exactly this. I don't EVER want to see a mobile version of any website on my tablet. And yet far too many websites refuse to give me the full site no matter what I click, ignoring the flag in my browser for "request desktop version" and not having anything of their own I can click to get there.

      I have never seen a site that works better on my tablet in mobile version than full, but I have seen many sites refuse to let me even try the full version.

      Additionally, my phone is now in the same range, I only want the desktop version on it too. again, not an option on many sites.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by steveg ( 55825 )

        Yes, yes, yes.

        And even on my phone which is *not* in that range, no mobile site I've ever seen works well. There is always too much loss of funtionality. I'm willing to scroll around on the desktop site, even if I'm doing so through a tiny porthole. If you're going to force your mobile site on me, then I'll just leave. Give me a way to turn the damned thing off.

        To be fair, Slashdot hasn't forced it on us yet. When I go to http://slashdot.org/ [slashdot.org] on my phone, I get the real site, not the mobile one. Lets h

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by dgatwood ( 11270 )

          The only major problems I'm aware of with the full version of Slashdot on mobile devices are the ratings slider (which could be trivially fixed by adding support for touch events or by providing an alternative set of up-down arrow controls for the two values that appear only on mobile devices via CSS trickery) and the fact that the minimum column width is too damn wide for viewing on a phone, so you end up scrolling back and forth (which again could be trivially fixed with CSS by adding the various -*-text-

      • I occasionally have problems with getting the desktop version of various sites to load. Whenever my default browser can't manage it, Opera Mobile has a change user agent setting that seems to actually work.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by dargaud ( 518470 )
        Android browsers normally have a settable user agent. But the setting depends on the device. On my Galaxy SII you go to about:useragent to access it. Google it up.

      • Exactly this. I don't EVER want to see a mobile version of any website on my tablet. And yet far too many websites refuse to give me the full site no matter what I click

        Amen to that.

        I can't tell you how annoying it is to follow a link that says "redirecting to our mobile site", which then dumps you at the main page without attempting to get you where you wanted and no way to get to it.

        If you can't give me the content I was looking for, and give me at least as good as what I'd have gotten from the normal pag

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Moxon ( 139555 )

          Oh, yes, I'm so tired of that. ..and the mbeta site is weirdly proportioned on my galaxy tab. Looks like I'm getting the "ancient nokia" version stretched to fill a 10 inch screen. Just gimme the desktop site already.

  • Good work! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sootman ( 158191 ) on Tuesday November 27, 2012 @02:15PM (#42107933) Homepage Journal

    Sincerely. Even though I still use this system [pixelcity.com] that I banged together a few years ago (more info here [pixelcity.com]), the new mbeta page looks really nice.

  • Missing important feature (Score:5, Funny)

    by lucm ( 889690 ) on Tuesday November 27, 2012 @02:16PM (#42107943)

    How come there is no tiles? Give us tiles!

  • slow and clumsy (Score:5, Insightful)

    by godrik ( 1287354 ) on Tuesday November 27, 2012 @02:17PM (#42107959)

    I just tried on my htc desire with cianogene mod. It is much slower than the "original" version. I need to click a link to read the summary, which completely defeat the purpose of having a homepage. If I want to click the stories I want to read, i'd use an RSS feed reader not slashdot home page.

    I won't use it.

  • I know you guys hate Windows, but come on. The emulator app is free, this one isn't hard.

  • tiny useless summaries (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kunwon1 ( 795332 ) <dave.j.moore@gmail.com> on Tuesday November 27, 2012 @02:24PM (#42108017) Homepage
    give us the full summary of every article on the index page, or this is completely useless. if i have to click on and then wait for the loading of every individual story just to get summaries, there's no way i'll use the mobile site.
  • Just trying out the new mobile site and am loving the experience
  • The 'load more articles' is hideously slow on phones, especially when low bandwidth is available. Using the web standard back button, the 'more articles' disappear. Also, a LOT of mobile devices like to de-cache tabs when they haven't been touched in as little as half a minute depending on other activity. This also wrecks the 'more articles'. All I ask for is a way to load each clump of articles on its own page, instead of cramming them all onto one page and making me click a button...wait...click a but
  • Hugely annoying ad "The HTML 5 Center" across the top looks more like a header or a mistake in the template than an ad...

  • Select Comment Score Threshold (Score:3)

    by jeffy210 ( 214759 ) on Tuesday November 27, 2012 @02:40PM (#42108177)

    I like the new mobile site it is very clean, but the biggest problem I have is you can't select your comment score threshold. I like to browse from 2 to 4 depending on the number of comments I get back, but the "Top Rated" link doesn't give me as good of control over what I want to see at the time and quite often I'll get 1's in there.

    My only other issue is that it is *very* touchy and sometimes trying to grab the screen to scroll gets interpreted as a tap and it loads up the article.

    Other than that, great job guys!

  • Fix commenting in the mobile environment before releasing new stuff. If you have to edit something it's unadulterated pure frustration.
  • The beta looks decent but on the nexus 10 there is a noticeable lag when scrolling which is not there on the full site. I would think that a mobile optimized site would be more responsive and not less.

  • Basically non-functional on either my phone or the Android Tablet I am current developing on:

    Android 2.3 & 4.0 w/ current Opera for Android.

    This is a rough crowd--would be nice if a "Mobile Site" would work with a pair of pretty vanilla "Mobile Devices".

    Maybe Slashdot needs a QA department?

  • That if I load Slashdot on a phone / tablet that it'll helpfully ask if I want to download the app instead. Every single time, or even at random. I wonder if sites know how fucking annoying it is to be asked this question repeatedly.

  • Does it load a different interface dependent on device! Or doesn't look the same across all? If so, it's a very very iOS looking design, at leas the top menus. Just strange for a site that Rae's against Apple so much...

  • Opera mini doesn't work. Standard browser is slow on reasonably new phone (dual core 1.2Ghz with Android 4). But with hours of tweaking, I am sure I can find a solution to read text somewhat comfortably on a screen (yes LCD, not CRT, modern stuff). A site for nerds with time on their hands. Feeling young again... I am underwhelmed.

  • Already got the spam ... (Score:3)

    by gstoddart ( 321705 ) on Tuesday November 27, 2012 @03:12PM (#42108605) Homepage

    Already got the email from Slashdot ... and getting email from Slashdot is kinda new, especially since it's coming from a 3rd party (elabs10.com).

    And I'm not sure I especially like a Slashdot which emails me such things through a mass-mail host. Especially one which has apparently been blacklisted as a spammer. I'm pretty sure I never told Slashdot they could do that.

    Maybe "Dice Holdings" are becoming asshats?

  • Why would you post this today? Sometime last week you updated the mobile code and broke scrolling. Seriously. On the Android 4 browser you can now basically no longer properly scroll the mbeta.slashdot.org site. It's like it's eating touch and/or scroll events for lunch. You clearly tried to fix this, because you can now fling again, but if you are in contact with the touchscreen, the site stops scrolling within a second or so. This problem was not present a week or two ago. Very, horrifically annoyi

  • Going to mbeta.slashdot.org on my Nokia N900 results in a blank page. The regular site works well when browsing with Midori and Firefox. What am I missing here?

    • Blank for me on my iPhone as well. And can't click anything but the ads when I try to load this in Chrome. Doesn't seem to be beta quality yet.

  • nothing different on iPad compared to the regular site... except, the OBNOXIOUS pop-up banner ad thing at the bottom.

    Seriously? Thanks for that.

    • hate to reply to self, but just found out that you have to click the mbeta link to see it on iPad... I assumed it would pick up the agent and redirect since the summary says "launched."

      I probably don't understand what "launched" means, though.

  • Please add blackberry playbook to the devices that are supported. It's the same webkit browser everyone else is using (though with better compliance scores in many cases), and it works just fine when I click 'let me in anyway'.

  • There really is no need to replace the perfectly functional "back" button on mobile Safari with your own version that takes up 20% of the screen.

  • Why doesn't it look like Slashdot? (Score:3)

    by Paul Slocum ( 598127 ) on Tuesday November 27, 2012 @04:06PM (#42109269) Homepage Journal
    The mobile site has a dramatically different style than the Slashdot website. It doesn't have the same color scheme, fonts, layout, or any stylistic element in common that I can find. I realize this is a beta and this is Slashdot, but I thought it was pretty standard to start working on the look of a website before beta stage?
  • In most respects the mobile interface is great, but one thing kills it for me. I simply cannot scroll on the front (story list) page. Every attempt to scroll gets interpreted as a click. Very annoying, almost unusable. I'm using a Samsung S3, Android 4.1.1.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tooke ( 1961582 )
      Yeah, same for me on my samsung galaxy exhibit with android 2.3.6. I can't stand it; it makes the whole site completely unusable for me. They better keep the old mobile site around, or at least until this gets fixed.

  • I haven no trouble with the main site on my tablet, so you must be pandering to those people who bought sub standard tablets with low resolution screens who think that all tablets are the 'same'. /sarcasm

  • Everything I ever needed to do can be done on a tablet!
  • The mobile site is god awful slow and laggy where by a dedicated app would probably solve this much like XDA's portal application to access their forums. /. could have or should have had one by now....

    • slashdot can barely make a functioning AJAX and CSS for desktop PCs (and it's still slow and css breaks in some browsers)... you want them to make an iOS app that works in different resolutions for iphone5, iphone 4, ipad 1/2/mini, ipad 3/4, and then an Android app that works for the umpteen hordes of different Android versions and devices, and a third one for Windows 8 RT and Windows Surface Pro, and Windows Phone 8, all without sucking balls?

      You ask too much.

  • Great. Another web site dumbing down the internet.

    Please make it optional. My iOS client can view regular web site just fine thank you. And I can zoom into it as required.

    Geez.

    Might as well go back to the WAP days...

  • Posting from Nexus 7 and here is what it looks like in portrait mode. Basically more than half the screen stays empty. What tablets did you test it with, besides iPad?
    Screenshot [imgur.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sootman ( 158191 )

      > What tablets did you test it with, besides iPad?

      A: None.

      PS: We didn't test on the iPad, either. :D

  • But does it have support for UTF-8? :)
  • I am still on the old commenting style, with none of the JS crap, and /. was a pain on mobile till now. This is a fantastic effort guys. Really love the UI and as a product manager, impressed by the placement of ads. Really good.

  • First I used the normal slashdot from my PC.

    Then I wanted to be cool and modern and shit like everyone else so I upgraded my AMPS brick phone to one of those new models with a retardedly high resolution...

    Now whenever I go to a site that dares give me a paired down mobile version automatically without asking it makes me sad..sometimes I even want to frown.

    Occasionally it is nice to just sit fads out and wait for technology to go full circle instead of wasting time caring about useless short term problems li

  • On my Nexus 7 tablet, I *never* want the mobile version of a Web site. Best solution to this is to use Firefox and the Phony extension (set to be the desktop Firefox agent string) and your surfing will be exactly like your desktop browsing is.

  • I browse topics through Google reader on my phone and on my pc. Is there a way for the site to detect the browser and launch the right version? I dint want to have to have two feeds for the same site.

  • Now I can read ./ on the toilet...

  • It doesn't detect my Palm Pre or Touchpad properly. Those both use the same webkit rendering engine as everyone else. Looks great, though! Please add WebOS to your detection.

    • Also, what will the actual URL be? Don't really want to bookmark mbeta and then not know about things going live.

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