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digitalmars.D.announce - D Forum Mobile Version - Beta

reply matheus <matheus gmail.com> writes:
Hi,

I use to access this Forum mainly through the WEB version, and so 
far It never bothered me when reading on my PC.

But on my phone (An old LG K4) with tiny screen it's not very 
pleasant, I use this phone when I'm on the road, I lately I gave 
up to read this Forum through it.

So, I decided to create a "wrapper" of this Forum applying style 
for small screens like in my case.

The result is here: http://www.mazeware.com/dforums.html

Here are some diffs between both versions:

https://i.imgur.com/wfmm035.png

https://i.imgur.com/LzvhrdQ.png

https://i.imgur.com/BM13xTw.png

I'm sharing this because it may be useful for some people.

Finally I'd like to know if it is possible to have this to be 
acessed direct in your server (Maybe in a new sub-domain), since 
my hosting is slow.

Matheus.
Oct 26 2019
next sibling parent reply Bastiaan Veelo <Bastiaan Veelo.net> writes:
On Sunday, 27 October 2019 at 02:11:50 UTC, matheus wrote:

 Hi,

 I use to access this Forum mainly through the WEB version, and 
 so far It never bothered me when reading on my PC.

 But on my phone (An old LG K4) with tiny screen it's not very 
 pleasant, I use this phone when I'm on the road, I lately I 
 gave up to read this Forum through it.

 So, I decided to create a "wrapper" of this Forum applying 
 style for small screens like in my case.

 The result is here: http://www.mazeware.com/dforums.html

 Here are some diffs between both versions:

 https://i.imgur.com/wfmm035.png

 https://i.imgur.com/LzvhrdQ.png

 https://i.imgur.com/BM13xTw.png

 I'm sharing this because it may be useful for some people.

 Finally I'd like to know if it is possible to have this to be 
 acessed direct in your server (Maybe in a new sub-domain), 
 since my hosting is slow.

 Matheus.


I’d recommend contacting Vladimir directly, like bachmeier said 
in 
https://forum.dlang.org/post/jnikxmmrmohsdszafisy forum.dlang.org.

However, I tried your version and it didn’t work well for me; I’m 
on an iPhone 6. I prefer the current version in the threaded mode.

I don’t know how you implemented your version, but if you can 
make it configurable as one of the current supported view modes, 
I guess the chances of getting it accepted are higher.

Thanks for contributing.

Bastiaan.
Nov 27 2019
parent reply matheus <matheus gmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 27 November 2019 at 10:58:17 UTC, Bastiaan Veelo 
wrote:

 I’d recommend contacting Vladimir directly, like bachmeier 
 said...


OK I'll try that.


 However, I tried your version and it didn’t work well for me; 
 I’m on an iPhone 6. I prefer the current version in the 
 threaded mode.


Could you please explain more about this or take a screenshot? 
Because so far 4 friends (3 on Android e 1 on iPhone 8 ~ 9 I 
think) said it works better than the actual version on mobile, 
their main complain is about the speed and that's because my 
hosting is slow.

I'm using JavaScript to handle some features and hid some 
elements and for this I set an interval because the some features 
of this Forum uses JS too.

By the way I made this version for "viewing" only.


 I don’t know how you implemented your version, but if you can 
 make it configurable as one of the current supported view 
 modes, I guess the chances of getting it accepted are higher.


It can be set, I'm current using CURL to get the page and setting 
the style over it.

If it was totally 100% static it would be easier and clean, but 
there are some JS that it was needed to take care of.

Thanks,

Matheus.
Nov 27 2019
parent reply Johannes Loher <johannes.loher fg4f.de> writes:
On Wednesday, 27 November 2019 at 15:17:15 UTC, matheus wrote:

 On Wednesday, 27 November 2019 at 10:58:17 UTC, Bastiaan Veelo 
 wrote:

 I’d recommend contacting Vladimir directly, like bachmeier 
 said...


 OK I'll try that.


 However, I tried your version and it didn’t work well for me; 
 I’m on an iPhone 6. I prefer the current version in the 
 threaded mode.


 Could you please explain more about this or take a screenshot? 
 Because so far 4 friends (3 on Android e 1 on iPhone 8 ~ 9 I 
 think) said it works better than the actual version on mobile, 
 their main complain is about the speed and that's because my 
 hosting is slow.

 I'm using JavaScript to handle some features and hid some 
 elements and for this I set an interval because the some 
 features of this Forum uses JS too.

 By the way I made this version for "viewing" only.


 I don’t know how you implemented your version, but if you can 
 make it configurable as one of the current supported view 
 modes, I guess the chances of getting it accepted are higher.


 It can be set, I'm current using CURL to get the page and 
 setting the style over it.

 If it was totally 100% static it would be easier and clean, but 
 there are some JS that it was needed to take care of.

 Thanks,

 Matheus.


I have to agree that I prefer the regular version by a lot. Some 
concerns that I can immediately identify with your version are:
* no space around the content. I don‘t want the letters to stick 
directly to the border of my phone‘s screen.
* small font size. It‘s just to small to readable comfortably.
* Painfully slow (that could be fixable by better hosting)
* Weirdly styled „Create Thread“ Button.
* Weird spacing in general. As mentioned before, there is missing 
space to the screen border, but in other places, there is 
disturbingly much space, e.g. between the different forum 
„groups“ (new users, ecosystem etc.)
* icons next to some links (e.g. permalink, reply) are broken
* you mentioned that is intended as readonly. a readonly Forum Is 
basically useless imo. Also if it is readonly, why are there 
reply and create thread buttons?

I‘m sure, I could mention a lot more, but these are the major 
points I immediately noticed. I‘m looking at it in an iPhone 8.

That said, I don‘t really see what is wrong with the mobile 
version of the regular forum. Sure, there are some things which 
could be improved a bit, but in contrast to your suggestion it at 
least gets spacing and fontsize right. What are your concerns 
with the regular forum on mobile devices?
Nov 27 2019
parent reply matheus <matheus gmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 27 November 2019 at 21:32:06 UTC, Johannes Loher 
wrote:

 ... What are your concerns with the regular forum on mobile 
 devices?


Look at the first post, I showed the diffs between both versions:

https://i.imgur.com/wfmm035.png <- For "me" the new is cleaner.

https://i.imgur.com/LzvhrdQ.png <- I can read more.

https://i.imgur.com/BM13xTw.png <- At the bottom there is a 
shortcut to change pages on a topic.

Well I'll not enter in a battle which design is better, all I 
know is the current design doesn't works for me on my old LG K4.


 * Weird spacing in general. As mentioned before, there is 
 missing space to the screen border, but in other places, there 
 is disturbingly much space, e.g. between the different forum 
 „groups“ (new users, ecosystem etc.)


Let's see this closely and compare these 2 versions:

1) https://i.imgur.com/n2N7Tfx.png <- In the original you need to 
scroll down first to see the topics.

2) After scrolling down you will see this: 
https://i.imgur.com/tijpNip.png So between the 2 versions, the 
new version is only missing one topic (LDC).



 I‘m sure, I could mention a lot more, but these are the major 
 points I immediately noticed. I‘m looking at it in an iPhone 8.


I'd like to see screenshots running on your iPhone 8.



 ...you mentioned that is intended as readonly. a readonly Forum 
 Is basically useless imo. Also if it is readonly, why are there 
 reply and create thread buttons?


Again look my first post where I said:


 I use to access this Forum mainly through the WEB version, and 
 so far It never bothered me when reading on my PC.

 But on my phone (An old LG K4) with tiny screen it's not very 
 pleasant, I use this phone when I'm on the road, I lately I 
 gave up to read this Forum through it.


So I use this mobile version only when I am on the road, to see 
what's happening here, if you ask the mods, all my posts came 
from the same IP (Desktop), this mobile version was intended only 
to read on my tiny and old mobile phone.

Yes the button (Create a Topic) was decorated while I was testing 
("Beta"), but the page inside (Submit Form) wasn't.


which currently are in doubt between a new language (C++, Rust 
and D) for some projects, and they complained about the layout 
too, and for what it seems maybe we are the only 5 ~ 6 persons 
bothered with this problem.

I'll let this running if my friends showed some interest, 
otherwise I'll turn this private for my own use, since I'll be 
only user.

Matheus.

PS: I'm foreigner so my English isn't good and I am not a web 
designer.
Nov 27 2019
parent Johannes Loher <johannes.loher fg4f.de> writes:
To begin with: Sorry if my last post came across a bit harsh. 
That was not my intention. I thought you were looking for 
feedback and I wanted to be honest regarding that. If you are 
simply doing it for yourself and others, who also like it, that 
is of course perfectly fine. But personally I would not want it 
under an official domain in the current state because it simply 
looks a bit unprofessional in my opinion (which is fine for 
personal use, but would reflect on D‘s image if made official).

On Wednesday, 27 November 2019 at
23:54:19 UTC, matheus wrote:

 On Wednesday, 27 November 2019 at 21:32:06 UTC, Johannes Loher 
 wrote:

 ... What are your concerns with the regular forum on mobile 
 devices?


 Look at the first post, I showed the diffs between both 
 versions:

 https://i.imgur.com/wfmm035.png <- For "me" the new is cleaner.


That’s personal preference, which is fine. Your version is more 
minimal, and actually does have one major benefit: You can read 
the whole topic names. On the other hand, your version is missing 
some things which I like very much, e.g. the breadcrumbs (Index » 
Learn » Topic name) which I regularly use to quickly navigate 
between different forums.


 https://i.imgur.com/LzvhrdQ.png <- I can read more.


Which is achieved mainly by removing the margins and decreasing 
font size. Depending on your device, this might actually work 
out, but it does not on my iPhone 8. There is a reason why every 
major website uses margins around the content. You might also 
want to take a look at what the „Reader Modes“ of some browsers 
look like. They reduce the style of pages to a minimum (only 
black text on white background), but they still keep the fontsize 
quite a bit bigger than what you are using and they also use 
margins.

Space is also gained because you remove some small parts. While I 
already mentioned that I personally would want the breadcrumbs to 
stay, there is a point to removing the „Log in, Settings, Help“ 
section, if this is really only for reading. Others who actually 
use this part of the website might disagree of course.


 https://i.imgur.com/BM13xTw.png <- At the bottom there is a 
 shortcut to change pages on a topic.


While I personally hate absolutely positioned navigation bars 
(they just look weird to me), this is actually helpful because 
you do not have to scroll down all the way to navigate. What I‘d 
personally prefer though would be to have a navigation at both 
the top and the bottom, but that‘s just personal preference.


 Well I'll not enter in a battle which design is better, all I 
 know is the current design doesn't works for me on my old LG K4.


 * Weird spacing in general. As mentioned before, there is 
 missing space to the screen border, but in other places, there 
 is disturbingly much space, e.g. between the different forum 
 „groups“ (new users, ecosystem etc.)


 Let's see this closely and compare these 2 versions:

 1) https://i.imgur.com/n2N7Tfx.png <- In the original you need 
 to scroll down first to see the topics.


Agreed, there is a lot of info in the original version that 
regular users probably don’t need to see all the time. Removing 
this is actually good (at least for my usage, the missing 
introduction might be bad for new forum users).


 2) After scrolling down you will see this: 
 https://i.imgur.com/tijpNip.png So between the 2 versions, the 
 new version is only missing one topic (LDC).


And this is mostly because the spacing between the different 
forum groups is quite big (too big in my opinion). I already 
mentioned that your version has one major benefit here: you can 
read complete titles. But this comes at the cost of the „Last 
Post“ link, a feature I use on a daily basis, which I would not 
want to miss. It basically brings me to the latest post which I 
have not read yet, so it allows me to quickly find all the new 
information which has been posted since my last visit. This is an 
extremely important feature to me because it basically defines 
how I use the forums.


 I‘m sure, I could mention a lot more, but these are the major 
 points I immediately noticed. I‘m looking at it in an iPhone 8.


 I'd like to see screenshots running on your iPhone 8.


https://ibb.co/qgYhvZm
https://ibb.co/HxBBFDS
https://ibb.co/jZD89Fq


 ...you mentioned that is intended as readonly. a readonly 
 Forum Is basically useless imo. Also if it is readonly, why 
 are there reply and create thread buttons?


 Again look my first post where I said:


 I use to access this Forum mainly through the WEB version, and 
 so far It never bothered me when reading on my PC.

 But on my phone (An old LG K4) with tiny screen it's not very 
 pleasant, I use this phone when I'm on the road, I lately I 
 gave up to read this Forum through it.


 So I use this mobile version only when I am on the road, to see 
 what's happening here, if you ask the mods, all my posts came 
 from the same IP (Desktop), this mobile version was intended 
 only to read on my tiny and old mobile phone.

 Yes the button (Create a Topic) was decorated while I was 
 testing ("Beta"), but the page inside (Submit Form) wasn't.


If a readonly version does it for you, that‘s fine of course. I 
like the possibility to interactively use the forum on my 
mobilephone very much. In fact, I am writing this post on my 
mobilephone. However, I still don‘t think it makes sense to have 
those buttons in a readonly version. You could save even more 
space by removing them.



 friends which currently are in doubt between a new language 
 (C++, Rust and D) for some projects, and they complained about 
 the layout too, and for what it seems maybe we are the only 5 ~ 
 6 persons bothered with this problem.

 I'll let this running if my friends showed some interest, 
 otherwise I'll turn this private for my own use, since I'll be 
 only user.

 Matheus.

 PS: I'm foreigner so my English isn't good and I am not a web 
 designer.


Again, all of this is fine. If you and other people get value out 
of it, that is great. But as already mentioned, I don‘t think it 
should be made official (i.e. hosting on an official subdomain) 
in the current state.
Nov 28 2019
prev sibling parent reply "Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa)" <SeeWebsiteToContactMe semitwist.com> writes:
I'm actually quite surprised by some of the responses. I use the web 
interface web whenever I'm visiting these forums from my phone, and 
personally, I think the CSS/layout in your version is a HUGE 
improvement. Most fantastic of all is that the thread list page and 
certain code samples are actually *readable* in your version without 
constantly needing to switch back and forth to landscape.

Granted, that's not to say there isn't room for tweaking. I'd maybe 
slightly decrease the vertical spacing on the list of subforums (ie, 
"general", "announce", "Community", "GDC", etc). Being able to ditch the 
need for most of the JS would, of course, be a huge benefit. And on the 
list pages (list of subforums and list of threads), yea, a little touch 
of left margin wouldn't hurt there, just for visual balance. Keeping the 
thread overview would be nice.

But I'd leave the actual posts exactly as-is.

1. I find the text size to be exactly what I wish most sites would use. 
Most sites just assume everyone's on some kind of "Apple iSuperMini for 
Oompa-Loompas With The Fingers of Five-Year-Olds" and crank up the font 
size to absurd levels to compensate. The result is not merely an 
enormously waste of screen real-estate on a form factor notorious for 
every last millimeter being crucial, but the fonts themselves actually 
manage to be uncomfortably large to read in the first place.

(Frankly, devices and users quite *obviously* should be able to just set 
their own preferred font size globally. And accordingly, that's exactly 
how HTML *1* was designed. But now that ships's sailed and we're left 


2. The only reason extra margins would be needed on the actual 
post-viewing pages would be as a workaround for those goofy phones with 
the nonsensical misfeature of "edge-to-edge" screens the manufacturers 
have been trying to push (just because they can, and because they figure 
its harder for their competitors to copy). Handheld touchscreens obviously
need borders (that's just basic HCI common-sense), and requests for 
applications/websites to add them back in just proves its nothing more 
than a glaring flaw of the phone itself. People with better 
practicality-oriented phones shouldn't have to sacrifice their own 
perfectly usable real estate just because of some *other* phones' 
MBA-driven lunacy.

In any case, I think this visual refresh is a huge improvement, I love it.
Nov 27 2019
next sibling parent Johannes Loher <johannes.loher fg4f.de> writes:
On Thursday, 28 November 2019 at 04:23:21 UTC, Nick Sabalausky 
(Abscissa) wrote:

 1. I find the text size to be exactly what I wish most sites 
 would use. Most sites just assume everyone's on some kind of 
 "Apple iSuperMini for Oompa-Loompas With The Fingers of 
 Five-Year-Olds" and crank up the font size to absurd levels to 
 compensate. The result is not merely an enormously waste of 
 screen real-estate on a form factor notorious for every last 
 millimeter being crucial, but the fonts themselves actually 
 manage to be uncomfortably large to read in the first place.


The problem you describe my be a real one, but the solution 
presented by this version of the forum is not any better because 
it makes the text very hard to read on devices with high pixel 
density. It is possible to have the fontsize depend on the 
devices pixel density, which would be a much better solution.


 2. The only reason extra margins would be needed on the actual 
 post-viewing pages would be as a workaround for those goofy 
 phones with the nonsensical misfeature of "edge-to-edge" 
 screens the manufacturers have been trying to push (just 
 because they can, and because they figure its harder for their 
 competitors to copy). Handheld touchscreens obviously
 need borders (that's just basic HCI common-sense), and requests 
 for applications/websites to add them back in just proves its 
 nothing more than a glaring flaw of the phone itself. People 
 with better practicality-oriented phones shouldn't have to 
 sacrifice their own perfectly usable real estate just because 
 of some *other* phones' MBA-driven lunacy.


That is missing the point in my opinion. Margins are important 
for visual separation and to create focus. My iPhone 8 has 
borders around the screen, but having text stick directly to this 
border makes it very hard to read. Having an additional white 
border is much more comfortable. This is also something that has 
been established for a very long time. There is a reason that 
basically every medium in existence uses margins like that (e.g. 
books, newspapers, etc.)
Nov 28 2019
prev sibling parent matheus <matheus gmail.com> writes:
On Thursday, 28 November 2019 at 04:23:21 UTC, Nick Sabalausky 
(Abscissa) wrote:

 Granted, that's not to say there isn't room for tweaking. I'd 
 maybe slightly decrease the vertical spacing on the list of 
 subforums (ie, "general", "announce", "Community", "GDC", etc). 
 Being able to ditch the need for most of the JS would, of 
 course, be a huge benefit. And on the list pages (list of 
 subforums and list of threads), yea, a little touch of left 
 margin wouldn't hurt there, just for visual balance. Keeping 
 the thread overview would be nice.


Sure every opinion would be welcome for better experience on 
mobile.


 ...In any case, I think this visual refresh is a huge 
 improvement,


What would be nice if this or whatever better mobile version be 
hosted on a sub-domain over here, because the current speed of my 
hosting is just awful.

Like for example reddit have 3~4 versions of the same page:

Current layout: https://www.reddit.com/r/dlang/
The old layout: https://old.reddit.com/r/dlang/

And 2 compact versions:

1) https://i.reddit.com/r/dlang
2) https://www.reddit.com/r/dlang/.compact

With a sub-domain a person could choose what fits better for him.


 I love it.


Thanks.
Nov 28 2019