I've been using my mobile to access the site this week.
This has highlighted one or two issues.
The site appears to be very bandwidth heavy. I dont know the ins and outs but i suspect its related to things like the vid thumbnails at the bottom of the page and stuff. Every time you change page by making a post or summat, you redownload that data again.
I tried to counter that by disabling pictures from my phone browser. That doesnt work though bevause all the buttons like new topic reply etc are classed as pictures by the browser. That means you cant post. If you want to post you have to accept the big hit on your allowance it seems.
I dont know any solutions, just thought i'd mention it

Yeh it's crap, the issue has been raised a few times, Who ever builds the site doesn't seem to care about mobile / tablet users, tbh I doubt there are enough to justfy the extra work.

If you view the site with the native mobile browser then the elements (modules) at the bottom of the page wont show.
If you're using a mobile and view in desktop view then that's what you get desktop view and all the additional elements that your device can render will be rendered.

That's a user choice.

The browser should be caching the images which means the thumbs at the bottom which on average probably amount to 25k or so each (I haven't checked that) and once cached they will be loaded locally. The two thumbs in the random may change and if not previously loaded it will download the thumb. The remaining images are relatively static for periods of time and should also be cached by your browser.

I just tested the site in both modes with an android device in both native browser/mob FF and mobile and desktop views and the page loads on the forum pages were all sub 1 second the worst being 0.75 seconds average 0.4x.

@Dantesrevival mobile users account for less than 2% of users. That doesn't mean that we don't care it does mean they are a lower priority. I'm not a web master so if you are and know the answer by all means let me know what the solution is. In the last thread on this issue I said there was a pending update and part of that update should address some of the mobile device issues. I have had other things going on that I have had to deal with, which means it's not been addressed as yet. I haven't had a chance to situp for a night (possibly longer) building a mirror of this site and testing and fixing issues caused by the update. At which point I have to pop back here and apply the update and all the fixes to the live site without causing loss or interruption to the site which is active 24/7. I have a much bigger issue about to hit home soon and I can't guarantee what time I will have available, plus I also have a new project which has arrived unexpectedly and then I have other jobs to do for other people on their sites.

There are commercial solutions which can improve the mobile version of the site if someone would like to foot the bill which is either $99 or $199 per year per domain. Obviously that doesn't cover installation, implementation or patch maintenance all of which obviously has a cost attached.

Cheers frog. I wasnt having a pop or demanding summat is done, just bringing up something i'd noticed. You are right that i've been using desktop mode so its a matter of my own choice. I just find the place is a bit awkward when the browser runs in mobile mode. tbf though thats likely down to my tech ineptitude.
its not something i'd have ever noticed without using 3g.

You might want to try opera mobile and/or maxthon if they're available for your mobile.

Cheers andy. Can i ask what will that do?

dubmeup wrote:
I didn't think you were having a pop I was trying to explain how it works as I understand it which I accept could be totally wrong! I have zero formal education in web development and come from a time when calculators weren't even available in school. All I know is what I can glean from trying stuff out and then attempting to make it work. Web technology is going through a major shift right now on account of mobile devices. There are multiple solutions and techniques being tried among web developers some better than others and progress is being made. To be honest I struggle keeping up with the constant changes in web technology which is in a constant state of rapid evolution.

The version of Kunena we are currently on is pre their move towards mobile content delivery and as such it has issues with mobiles. The new version is supposed to address some of the issues caused by the old programming conventions used. I haven't tested it yet so I have no idea how much of an improvement has been achieved.

It's only a user choice with respect to how you prefer to view the site the mobile view obviously offers less features but is optimized for a small screen and limited bandwidth. The desktop view provides a more feature rich environment but it's designed for a different architecture and large screen resolutions, with greater demand for bandwidth.

I can use the site with my android in either mode - there are pluses and minuses with both approaches. The thing is they both work. Having said that a web developer could improve greatly on my efforts of that I have no doubt. I'm not an expert just like the rest of the team we are just a bunch of people having a go.

I did have the images setup to draw only when viewed but everyone complained about the images fading in as they scrolled, so I stopped using that technique, which should have increased the speed of a page loads and reduced some demands on bandwidth.

It's not an excuse and I'm not having ago that's just how it is and those are the limitations which we have to work to. Catering to mobile devices is something we are aware of but it's not a simple thing to deal with within the parameters constraining us. The next version of Joomla has specifically been targeted at mobile content delivery and they are currently at Joomla v3.0 Beta1. Which will eventually be the next major release. Joomla release cycle There are implications with each major release because it effects how the various templates and extensions work or don't work in some cases .

Dub,

I have made some changes to the way the site works for mobiles it's a bit quick 'n dirty but will hopefully make using the forum a bit easier. You can't access the other parts of the site in mobile view! If you need access to anything that's not directly available from the forum menu you will need to switch to desktop view.

Take a look and see if it's easier for you to use.

I have taken a look using Opera and the text over runs the right margin so you may need to look at the settings options to see if there is anything that can be done to sort that.

The mobile view is fine using Mobile FireFox and the default Android web browser.

Let me know if it has made the forum easier to use on your device.

Cheers,
Frog

Bloody hell! I really wasn't pushing for that frog so thanks a lot for doing that I'll get back to you with some feedback

I spent a little more time on this so now you can access the main menu and the other areas of the site. Some features may not work on your phone, although the majority should be OK provided you have a flash plugin installed on your browser. Not all the menu options are available from a mobile items which are accessed from some sub menus may not be available. If I get some time I will see about creating a menu specifically for mobile devices.

For some reason the Cookie accept screws up a bit...if you accept cookies then click on the menu and the cookie challenge presents itself again. If that happens don't accept cookies and go straight to the menu and select the option you would like. You should find that the Cookie challenge closes and gets out of the way at that point.

The content not wrapping on the right of the page occurred on the default browser for reasons I have been unable to determine. The font that your browser defaults to may be a contributory factor, although is haven't been very scientific in my assessment of that being the cause. Switching between landscape and portrait mode is another possibility. It would probably be best to view the SZ in landscape view. If you discover what triggers the loss of content on the right hand side of the pages please let me know how I can repeat the steps.

Cheers,

ok, i'm having a look using opera mobile. have to say that first impressions of the changes are good. i quite like the menu structure frog. strangely i am not losing text to the right of the screen on my, andy and dante's posts in this thread. all the buttons are in view too. on your posts though frog, the text is missing on the right, as is the quote button. could this be due to your sig pic?

edit: had a little look around and it does seem to be only your posts that lose the right hand side with opera frog. seems really easy to get about now

Opera consistently suffers the loss of text in the right hand margin but that could be because of the default font that's being used. Opera picks up the font assigned in the phones settings. The image in my footer could also have an impact. I have removed it now so we will see if that was a factor. I have obviously viewed threads with my sig in them while running the odd tests and although I can't remember how the image was handled I didn't always suffer from the missing text.

Whatever happens the site and forum should function better now on most mobile devices.

EDIT:

Just saw your edit. Good we seem to have made progress then.

removing the sig has indeed led to me being able to see all of your posts now frog. have to say i am impressed by the changes so far.

dubmeup wrote:
No idea, lol.
Its just worth a try is all.
My iphones built in browser sucks as text is cut off to the side.
Maxthon might improve matters is all. I've been a busy bunny lately soz

I'm doing up a bmw for re-sale.

I plumped for Opera as I wanted to check out it's data compression. They claim that running through it's servers can save 70-80% bandwidth

Does seem better on me iPad, so what ever you did worked Frog, cheers I can post now without key stroke lag.