Mobile Users - please help by telling me what you want

Over half of the people who read permies are doing so on mobile devices.  That's huge!

We are paying attention to you.  

Can someone help me understand what people want from mobile view?  Smaller bandwidth? Fast loading?  What else?

What do you not want to see when using the mobile view?

What tools do you miss (or never knew you were missing) when you use the mobile view?

The image insertion and url insertion buttons are missing from my mobile view.
They are missed.
Same with the buttons that insert the code for bold, italic , underlined  and quoted text.

I'm always switching the mobile view to desktop view on my phone because the general forums page is not available. You have to select a forum topic, but I like perusing the random assortment of threads people are posting on. If the mobile view could include the "most recent" forums that would be great.

My mobile view has "recent" posts. This is what i use.

Honestly, I just disable the mobile view and have Permies load on my phone as it does on my computer. I would prefer if all the functionality existed on the mobile version, perhaps with an ability to disable individual high-bandwidth features on one's profile page.

-CK

Very good. I didn't know until now that I could use permies on my phone. What a relief, waiting rooms will be so much brighter now.
Brian

Not a mobile phone user, but heavily bandwidth limited (yet).
I would like to have an option to delay loading the images and display a small preview that is replaced with the full size image when clicked on.

Daniel Ray wrote:I'm always switching the mobile view to desktop view on my phone because the general forums page is not available. You have to select a forum topic, but I like perusing the random assortment of threads people are posting on. If the mobile view could include the "most recent" forums that would be great.

Seems like you have to login first then Recent Posts link shows.  Probably because it keeps track of what posts are unread by you to show those in bold.

I'm usually just reading on mobile, because I hate text editing on mobile.  For reading, I'm pretty ok with the current mobile view, except it just feels a little buggy.  A few tweaks would be good enough for me.

Random thoughts:

If I'm in email/browser and click on a link to a permies post (not the first post in a thread) it is very iffy where I'll end up.  Often you're at the top of the page instead of at the specific post.  Sometimes you're on page 1 instead of middle of page 3.  Sometimes it works. ??? (this may be phone/os dependent)

When I click the +1 button it isn't quite right.  On my current Android, it flashes a bit and the scrolling jumps a bit.  On the old iPhone, it put you back to the top of the page.  In both cases it looks like a full page refresh may have happened--ouch.

I often wish to "watch topic", or check that am already watching, without scrolling all the way to the bottom of a long thread.

I really like the little down arrow button at the top right that takes you to the bottom.  I use it alot.  But it looks unlike the other buttons, is too small, and too close to the big "logout" button.  Also, I wish it went to the last post on the page, or to the tiny add, or to something useful, rather than to the literal bottom where there's big empty space and tiny links.

The huge logout button can move to the menu or something.  I'll probably never use it.  (Yes I know the login button is sometimes there, and I do use that.)

I'd be curious to know what % of Posts were done on mobile.

For posting, I'd like to see some old posts for context right on the posting page, like we do in desktop.

And the insert buttons, like William said.

I browse sometimes on my phone but don't post.  I type way faster on my keyboard so wait to respond until I can type freely.

As with others - I always have to dig for the recent posts button when on mobile and it would be nice if that were right on the front/top page.  That being said, there are so many threads in forums that I haven't had a chance to read and I have so much to learn, if I'm reading something that was posted 5 years ago, that's a win too.

Otherwise, it works fine for me and I appreciate that.  I usually just sit and wait but if I'm reading something, it's this site.

Thanks for asking.  :)

Not sure if this exactly applies to what you're asking, but if I read the Dailyish on my mobile, the links aren't "live" the way they are on my computer.  Perhaps there's a setting I'm not aware of, but cutting and pasting addresses gets old.

I merged your stuff with the following thread. I hope that is okay by you.

Hello! Happy Saturday

Ive been playing with the site a bunch lately through my phone. I really only access it through my phone, which means I get the mobile version. As far as I can tell there is no way to do certain things on the mobile version that are available on the desktop.

The first is to watch or bookmark a forum or topic. And I can only watch a thread that I have specificially posted on. There just doesnt seem to be an option.

I also only see limited information when I click on a persons profile - for instance it doesnt show their scavenger hunt or their recent posts. I cant even see my own scavenger hunt information.

The last feature I notice is that all of the fun and neat options to organize and restrict what forumns you see on the home page are only available for the desktop version. :(

Now for all of these things, I have found the workaround. By going into my profile settings I can choose to not display the mobile version. Then all those goodie features show up. Is there any way to get those things on the mobile version? I only ever access the site on my phone and would love to be a ‘power user’ on the site to use it to its full extent.

Thanks for all you do!
Bryan

We are very much working toward improving our mobile version!

One thing you can do in the meantime is scroll to the bottom of the screen and click "desktop view." It's not optimal on mobile devices from what I've heard (I use a desktop computer and have no cellphone), but it does give you all the options to bookmark threads, etc.

I think we've got some threads around somewhere for improving the mobile view. I'll see if I can track them down, and add your suggestions to them!

Awesome! Thank you!

Also, great tip about being able to hit desktop version at the bottom. It took me a minute to find it because i was looking in the list at the bottom that includes home, search, recent topics etc.

For anybody looking for desktop features on a phone keep scrolling down to very tippy bottom - see attached pic.

I like reading the posts via the mobile version I feel its easier to read through and uncluttered. The posting I'm not too happy with buts it's a user issue I'm fighting with the latest version of Google keyboard and need to tweek the predictive text.

As for wants, as I really haven't spent much time on the desktop version, I'm not sure what is missing. I will have to use the desktop version once I get around to creating posts with pictures as they are located on my laptop.

I found out the links at the top of the forums on the desktop version do not appear in the mobile version. Now do people on mobile want this? I'm okay switching back and forth.

Thanks again for the work you all are doing. It's great to see so many people working together to create this forum.

I am dissapointed when I see a neat post title and click on it, and it's basically just a youtube link... at $30/gb I can't afford to watch that!

I am not sure much can be done about this... but threads that specifically state they are a video are helpful so I don't bother looking!

Another thing missing on Mobile View: Seeing all the posts in a category. Instead of seeing all the posts in a category, they just see the forums within it. Spotted here. This makes the Experiences category a whole lot less functional, as there's a lot of overlap between those forums.