Is the mobile site gone now?

[RacingPete]

hornetrider said:

The Beta2 skin looks 'ok' on a mobile device, if totally 'different' from mobile.ph and something we'll have to get used to - I'm not totally alien to change. I don't like the advert placed in the middle of the thread which I cannot block though.

The main problem with Beta2 is it looks absolutely fking horrendous on a desktop. Is it really hard to get the font/size/formatting sorted out?

Nope, I admitted elsewhere that it is not ideal on desktop - we will fix that, but have not had any resource to do so as priorities have been elsewhere.

[BoRED S2upid]

RacingPete said:

BoRED S2upid said:

I see4m to recall the last time changed were made it wasn't too successful either! not on this scale though. I imagine user numbers will drop now that we can't use the mobile site. I know I haven't posted as much over the last few days and if it continues to be a ballache there are other sites to use.

I would like to ask why the mobile site was much better than the Beta2 skin (apart from the one issue of going to the last post vs first post)? We would like to make it work for all of you and welcome criticism, but also would like to address the individual problems you have to make it better?

It was easy to find I could search 'Mobile Pistonheads' and find the mobile site. I am yet to be able to find it's replacement if there even is one that works as well?

Prehaps and i'm no IT expert, this maybe too simplistic a view. On the homepage you have a clear button to go to the mobile version because the normal website forum section just doesn't work on a mobile, currently when you click on Forums it's tiny you would need midget hands to navigate it!

[hornetrider]

RacingPete said:

Nope, I admitted elsewhere that it is not ideal on desktop - we will fix that, but have not had any resource to do so as priorities have been elsewhere.

Well, with Beta2 being garbage on a desktop I'm reluctant to switch to it in order to cure the mobile site's ills. One wonders why you didn't opt to sort out the Beta2 experience before rolling out these other changes. Now there just seems to be a bit of a clusterfk all round with people whinging left right and centre

[Killer2005]

Perhaps I'm being thick, but how do we log on to the new mobile version? Everytime I try I get an error message saying page doesn't exist

[soad]

Killer2005 said:

Perhaps I'm being thick, but how do we log on to the new mobile version? Everytime I try I get an error message saying page doesn't exist

Mobile (Beta) skin works for me.
http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/prefs.asp?h=0&a...

[BoRED S2upid]

soad said:

Killer2005 said:

Perhaps I'm being thick, but how do we log on to the new mobile version? Everytime I try I get an error message saying page doesn't exist

Mobile (Beta) skin works for me.
http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/prefs.asp?h=0&a...

That works in as much as I can log in and I don't get an error screen PS people who are having trouble clear all your cookies or the old mobile site will be default and your never going to log in.

However, this 'mobile friendly' as it says in Google is tiny! Your going to need 20/20 vision to see it and will spend the day zooming in especially on an iphone5. It's not user friendly and is not as good as mobile Pistonheads was!

Sort it out guys!

[RacingPete]

BoRED S2upid said:

That works in as much as I can log in and I don't get an error screen PS people who are having trouble clear all your cookies or the old mobile site will be default and your never going to log in.

However, this 'mobile friendly' as it says in Google is tiny! Your going to need 20/20 vision to see it and will spend the day zooming in especially on an iphone5. It's not user friendly and is not as good as mobile Pistonheads was!

Sort it out guys!

You will need to go to My Info > Preferences, and then change your skin to Beta2.

This then updates you to the new Mobile and Desktop view we are moving forwards with.

[BoRED S2upid]

RacingPete said:

BoRED S2upid said:

That works in as much as I can log in and I don't get an error screen PS people who are having trouble clear all your cookies or the old mobile site will be default and your never going to log in.

However, this 'mobile friendly' as it says in Google is tiny! Your going to need 20/20 vision to see it and will spend the day zooming in especially on an iphone5. It's not user friendly and is not as good as mobile Pistonheads was!

Sort it out guys!

You will need to go to My Info > Preferences, and then change your skin to Beta2.

This then updates you to the new Mobile and Desktop view we are moving forwards with.

I will try that but the question remains why? Most websites would automatically detect that i'm accessing it from a mobile and move me straight onto a mobile site or direct me to download the mobile app. You can't be instructing everyone to go to My Info > Preferences and to change to Beta 2?

Also you can't still be saying that Pistonheads is mobile friendly is users who have been with you for decades are having this much trouble! newbies will be leaving in their droves.

PS - Next time why not try these things first and only change when they work! for a small fee I could advise properly and test such things ;-)

[rscott]

They've already said that Beta2 will (eventually) be the default skin for new users.

Rather then develop two versions of the site, they're using one codebase and using css to adapt to the relevant platform. It's a very sensible approach. Then (for example) any links will display correctly on whatever device they're displayed on.

[M3ax]

RacingPete said:

The mobile.pistonheads.com is an unsupported mobile site provided by a third party which uses a scraping technology to display the pages. We cannot get any cost effective changes done to it as the contract isn't workable, so any changes to the underlying system it uses to scrape the pages will break the mobile.pistonheads.com site.

For example a new login system, the changes to the news site, swapping your skin in my preferences to Beta2 etc. all make it further unusable - thus it holds back development and improvements.

It is subjective whether it is better or worse, and as a daily user of the site I much prefer the new Beta2 on mobile. As it is a responsive site we have had to rebuild the whole page away from a table layout to divs - this has not made the Big Blue skin as desirable as it could be... we concede that.

We will be tweaking this over the coming weeks and releasing regularly to it - so you have an opportunity to influence that.

The mobile.pistonheads.com site will be turned off in a couple of weeks.

That's all fine and thanks for the explanation but here's the thing. I finally got to the new mobile skin and once it's there I can deal with it but it's a lot of messing about. I used to be able to go PH mobile with a click. Now it's like 4 or 5. I just don't have time. I'm a mobile user. I can't remember the last time I logged in on a laptop. The rare times I'm in the office I'm too busy. The rare times on at home I'm not online. It's just too hard frankly. Mobile is the priority I'm afraid. It's a shame as I'm about to give up having been a regular on classifieds etc and admittedly a low count forum member. Sorry mate, but it's a bit of a cock up. Max

[jamies30]

rscott said:

It's a very sensible approach.

It is a very sensible approach, spoiled only by a piss-poor implementation.

[hornetrider]

jamies30 said:

It is a very sensible approach, spoiled only by a piss-poor implementation.

Ouch!

[RacingPete]

M3ax said:

I finally got to the new mobile skin and once it's there I can deal with it but it's a lot of messing about. I used to be able to go PH mobile with a click. Now it's like 4 or 5. I just don't have time. I'm a mobile user.

How has it become 4 or 5 clicks from just 1 before.

The forums on mobile.pistonheads.com would have been a visit to the homepage and then a click on Forums in the header, and then if you wanted what's new or a particular forum another click.

The new site is go to www.pistonheads.com then choose menu, then forums. Click on the links at the bottom to go to what's new or my stuff or expand a forum and click in it.

If you frequent forums that are lower in the list then having all the sections collapsed means you can get to them quicker.

We have designs ready to be implemented on changing the homepage to a one click link to the forums, but apart from that I am not sure how it is much different.

Though I could be missing your user journey that means it is longer. Would be good to know so we can look to improve?

[M3ax]

Goes like this: clicked on PH mobile which took me to the old mobile site. Found I couldn't log on. (Tried this for a couple of days actually thinking it was a temp glitch). Then went to main site. Then searched website feedback to find discussion about skins. Then logged in. Then clicked preferences. Then changed skin. Then posted message. Ok, so now I know what to do but it took a lot of effort and I was determined to log on It's not straightforward.

[eltawater]

RacingPete said:

How has it become 4 or 5 clicks from just 1 before.

The forums on mobile.pistonheads.com would have been a visit to the homepage and then a click on Forums in the header, and then if you wanted what's new or a particular forum another click.
...
Though I could be missing your user journey that means it is longer. Would be good to know so we can look to improve?

I actually used to have mobile.pistonheads.com/gassing bookmarked so didn't need to go through the homepage. I would just scroll through the list of forums and tap the one I wanted to move into, look at the first page of threads for that forum and tap into any which I wished to jump to the last post for. To return to the list of forums, I'd just tap on the Gassing Station link in the breadcrumb at the top.

I'm finding the whole collapsed forum list a right PITA as I've now got to tap to expand, then visually adjust to a now expanded page to find the forum I wanted to tap into. If I want to switch from the General Gassing list to the Pie and Piston list, I either have to collapse and expand, or scroll and expand when previously I would just scroll to my hearts content. If I'm in the thread list for a forum, I've got to repeat the whole process again if I want to move from The Lounge to Speed Plod and the Law.

It might be a minor thing from a usability point of view but it becomes very very jarring in a short space of time having to click and expand, and it would be a shame if small usability issues such as this were to detract from all the great work that is being delivered!

[RacingPete]

Thank you both for your feedback - we will feed this in to the process to look to improve.

The two points to take is the process to move from the old site to the new one, and how the navigation works within the new mobile view.

[Jader1973]

Not being able to jump straight to the last page by simply clicking the page number is a bit of a pain.

Unless I'm missing something clicking a thread takes you to the first page or the last time you opened it if you click the symbol on the right hand side. You then have to type in the page number you want to visit.

I'm using mobile (beta) and it seems very "big". There isn't a lot of space at the top when you open a thread so scrolling without clicking something is hard. Also pics tend to fill the screen so scrolling past them without clicking them is tricky.

Could just be the fact I'm using a tiny screened iphone 4 mind you

[rscott]

Jader1973 said:

I'm using mobile (beta) and it seems very "big". There isn't a lot of space at the top when you open a thread so scrolling without clicking something is hard. Also pics tend to fill the screen so scrolling past them without clicking them is tricky.

Could just be the fact I'm using a tiny screened iphone 4 mind you

You want to be using beta2, not mobile (beta) . Not sure why they've left mobile (beta) available as they've stopped working on that version.

[Jader1973]

rscott said:

Jader1973 said:

I'm using mobile (beta) and it seems very "big". There isn't a lot of space at the top when you open a thread so scrolling without clicking something is hard. Also pics tend to fill the screen so scrolling past them without clicking them is tricky.

Could just be the fact I'm using a tiny screened iphone 4 mind you

You want to be using beta2, not mobile (beta) . Not sure why they've left mobile (beta) available as they've stopped working on that version.

Thanks. Changed to Beta 2.

I think it might be worse

No way to go to anything other than the first page as far as I can see. Or am I wrong?

ETA and how do I get back to the main forum list? I'm stuck on this thread!!

Edited by Jader1973 on Friday 15th May 13:09

[soad]

Jader1973 said:

ETA and how do I get back to the main forum list? I'm stuck on this thread!!

Click on My Stuff button. Gassing Station works too, chap.