Any way to make MobileRead more PDA friendly?

robinson · 03-04-2007, 11:17 AM

I've been struggling to get the MobileRead site to show up well in iSilo (see January thread in iSilo forum).

I tried https://www.mobileread.com/feeds/23_rss20.xml and
https://www.mobileread.com/feeds/34_rss20.xml

and while I can get the pages, the result isn't particularly user friendly!

When I click on an article link on the opening page, it goes to a page that has the article's text but it's way down on the page, 7-11 taps down. (And you know how spoiled we get in the PDA world--we want instant tap gratification!@)

Ironically, mobileread is now just about the only site I can't get working mobilely with a Palm!

(I tried enabling tables in iSilo which reduces the number of taps but then the text is partly off the screen, requiring scrolls left and right!)

It could be that I still haven't figured out the right settings in iSilo, although I have tried several different settings.

Maybe this is simply a limit in how the RSS feed is set up. Is there a more PDA friendly version of the site? A link or different address? Appreciate any help.

Bob Russell · 03-04-2007, 12:06 PM

Yeah, kind of embarrassing since we are all about mobile reading! But there are changes in progress for a new site design to be built with the mobile access in mind. And there also a MobileRead magazine in the works with all the MR contents in easy to convert format.

But these things do take time and a lot of work, so please be patient. Alex has done such a good job of making everything very practical, clean and usable, and we don't want to lose that in the new design. Be assured he hasn't forgotten about mobile devices! I'll leave any other tidbits to Alex to share in time, but he's pretty amazing so I'm sure we'll be delighted with whatever he ends up bringing us.

In the meantime, I think we'd all be interested to hear about solutions others may have come up with...

Alexander Turcic · 03-06-2007, 01:50 PM

I will come up with something by this weekend.

RWood · 03-06-2007, 02:36 PM

First a newsletter and now MR, the Magazine. Wow, this place just gets better and better. Can I get Alex and all to autograph my copy of the magazine?

Alexander Turcic · 03-06-2007, 03:06 PM

Heh

A paper magazine, eh? That would be kinda retro given our focus here...

I haven't been around for a few weeks, and I am happy to be back now!

RWood · 03-06-2007, 03:20 PM

I was thinking more of a signed electronic copy.

robinson · 03-07-2007, 09:42 AM

Thanks! Look forward to the redesign. Nice to hear about... and thanks for all the hard work, tips, news, etc. It's appreciated!

CommanderROR · 03-16-2007, 09:22 AM

I sometimes use mobileread.com with my mobile phone (Fujitsu-Siemens T830) and it works brilliantly for me. I never treid the RSS thing, but the "mobile version" of the forum seems to be fine.

Alexander Turcic · 03-17-2007, 02:37 PM

We're still on it and cannot wait to introduce http://www.mobileread.mobi to you.

memobug · 03-25-2007, 12:35 AM

robinson,

In the meantime, try:

http://www.skweezer.net/skweeze.aspx?q=mobileread.com

Alexander,

it's pretty easy to create an alternate, PDA-friendly template style for this particular forum software. It would need to be installed by a user with admin privileges, though, and the main key is get away from having the user detail on the left margin, going to a style that has just the user title across the top, inline with the message, and no avatars, with only text links on the attachments.

Regards,

Matt

Alexander Turcic · 03-27-2007, 11:46 AM

Thanks for the tip, Matt! Yes, we could/should install a mobile style for our forum software soon. Unfortunately, we are still not up-to-date with our current software and I am waiting for our designer to finish his work before a major upgrade here. After that we can install the mobile style.

Simultaneously we are working on a separate mobile version of MobileRead that is more suitable for offline readers (those who download content and read it afterwards on the device). Something like "last 10 posts" or "top posts of the day" ... Unfortunately I am so booked with stuff that I haven't been able to finish it yet.

To speed things up: If someone of you guys is fluent in xhtml+css, wants to earn a few bucks and perhaps a lovely permanent link from MobileRead, drop me a mail.

memobug · 04-04-2007, 07:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alexander Turcic

Simultaneously we are working on a separate mobile version of MobileRead that is more suitable for offline readers (those who download content and read it afterwards on the device). Something like "last 10 posts" or "top posts of the day" ... Unfortunately I am so booked with stuff that I haven't been able to finish it yet.

To speed things up: If someone of you guys is fluent in xhtml+css, wants to earn a few bucks and perhaps a lovely permanent link from MobileRead, drop me a mail.

It wasn't easy, but I finished it... Just Paypal the cash to the usual address

http://mobileread.com/forums/external.php?type=rss

Seriously there are a lot of things built into VB.

Regards,

Matt

Alexander Turcic · 04-04-2007, 08:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by memobug

It wasn't easy, but I finished it... Just Paypal the cash to the usual address

http://mobileread.com/forums/external.php?type=rss

Seriously there are a lot of things built into VB.

Regards,

Matt

Thanks for the suggestion Matt. We are aware of vB's RSS capabilities... also check out this page. But we'd like to go one step further and design full-featured websites for mobile devices. Most likely this will happen in a second step after we've revised our website.

NatCh · 06-27-2007, 06:26 PM

Any more news on the officially "mobile" version of MobileRead, Alexander?

They just foisted a giant Crackberry on my and took away my reasonable sized pager, I'd like to get some sort of use out of the trade.

(I see you've added yet more new smilies

)

mogui · 06-27-2007, 11:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RWood

First a newsletter and now MR, the Magazine. Wow, this place just gets better and better. Can I get Alex and all to autograph my copy of the magazine?

Wow! Will it have a centerfold?

Seriously though, I have been using Plucker to generate offline reading for my Palm. It doesn't seem to digest the RSS feeds supported here. It will convert an HTML web page just fine.

Does anyone have a tip? Is there another Palm app that will convert MR's RSS feeds?

03-04-2007, 11:17 AM	#1
robinson Zealot Posts: 142 Karma: 997293 Join Date: Jan 2003	Any way to make MobileRead more PDA friendly? I've been struggling to get the MobileRead site to show up well in iSilo (see January thread in iSilo forum). I tried https://www.mobileread.com/feeds/23_rss20.xml and https://www.mobileread.com/feeds/34_rss20.xml and while I can get the pages, the result isn't particularly user friendly! When I click on an article link on the opening page, it goes to a page that has the article's text but it's way down on the page, 7-11 taps down. (And you know how spoiled we get in the PDA world--we want instant tap gratification!@) Ironically, mobileread is now just about the only site I can't get working mobilely with a Palm! (I tried enabling tables in iSilo which reduces the number of taps but then the text is partly off the screen, requiring scrolls left and right!) It could be that I still haven't figured out the right settings in iSilo, although I have tried several different settings. Maybe this is simply a limit in how the RSS feed is set up. Is there a more PDA friendly version of the site? A link or different address? Appreciate any help.

03-04-2007, 12:06 PM	#2
Bob Russell Recovering Gadget Addict Posts: 5,381 Karma: 676161 Join Date: May 2004 Location: Pittsburgh, PA Device: iPad	We're a little behind the times, but we will catch up! Yeah, kind of embarrassing since we are all about mobile reading! But there are changes in progress for a new site design to be built with the mobile access in mind. And there also a MobileRead magazine in the works with all the MR contents in easy to convert format. But these things do take time and a lot of work, so please be patient. Alex has done such a good job of making everything very practical, clean and usable, and we don't want to lose that in the new design. Be assured he hasn't forgotten about mobile devices! I'll leave any other tidbits to Alex to share in time, but he's pretty amazing so I'm sure we'll be delighted with whatever he ends up bringing us. In the meantime, I think we'd all be interested to hear about solutions others may have come up with...

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03-06-2007, 01:50 PM	#3
Alexander Turcic Fully Converged Posts: 18,163 Karma: 14021202 Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Switzerland Device: Too many to count here.	I will come up with something by this weekend.

03-06-2007, 02:36 PM	#4
RWood Technogeezer Posts: 7,233 Karma: 1601464 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Virginia, USA Device: Sony PRS-500	First a newsletter and now MR, the Magazine. Wow, this place just gets better and better. Can I get Alex and all to autograph my copy of the magazine?

03-06-2007, 03:06 PM	#5
Alexander Turcic Fully Converged Posts: 18,163 Karma: 14021202 Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Switzerland Device: Too many to count here.	Heh A paper magazine, eh? That would be kinda retro given our focus here... I haven't been around for a few weeks, and I am happy to be back now!

03-06-2007, 03:20 PM	#6
RWood Technogeezer Posts: 7,233 Karma: 1601464 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Virginia, USA Device: Sony PRS-500	I was thinking more of a signed electronic copy.

03-07-2007, 09:42 AM	#7
robinson Zealot Posts: 142 Karma: 997293 Join Date: Jan 2003	Thanks! Look forward to the redesign. Nice to hear about... and thanks for all the hard work, tips, news, etc. It's appreciated!

03-16-2007, 09:22 AM	#8
CommanderROR eink fanatic Posts: 2,022 Karma: 4924 Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: Germany Device: STAReBOOK, iRex Iliad, Sony 505, Kindle 2	I sometimes use mobileread.com with my mobile phone (Fujitsu-Siemens T830) and it works brilliantly for me. I never treid the RSS thing, but the "mobile version" of the forum seems to be fine.

03-17-2007, 02:37 PM	#9
Alexander Turcic Fully Converged Posts: 18,163 Karma: 14021202 Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Switzerland Device: Too many to count here.	We're still on it and cannot wait to introduce http://www.mobileread.mobi to you.

03-25-2007, 12:35 AM	#10
memobug Connoisseur Posts: 51 Karma: 46 Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Silicon Valley Device: PRS-500/PRS-505/Kindle DX/iPhone 3G	robinson, In the meantime, try: http://www.skweezer.net/skweeze.aspx?q=mobileread.com Alexander, it's pretty easy to create an alternate, PDA-friendly template style for this particular forum software. It would need to be installed by a user with admin privileges, though, and the main key is get away from having the user detail on the left margin, going to a style that has just the user title across the top, inline with the message, and no avatars, with only text links on the attachments. Regards, Matt

03-27-2007, 11:46 AM	#11
Alexander Turcic Fully Converged Posts: 18,163 Karma: 14021202 Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Switzerland Device: Too many to count here.	Thanks for the tip, Matt! Yes, we could/should install a mobile style for our forum software soon. Unfortunately, we are still not up-to-date with our current software and I am waiting for our designer to finish his work before a major upgrade here. After that we can install the mobile style. Simultaneously we are working on a separate mobile version of MobileRead that is more suitable for offline readers (those who download content and read it afterwards on the device). Something like "last 10 posts" or "top posts of the day" ... Unfortunately I am so booked with stuff that I haven't been able to finish it yet. To speed things up: If someone of you guys is fluent in xhtml+css, wants to earn a few bucks and perhaps a lovely permanent link from MobileRead, drop me a mail.

06-27-2007, 06:26 PM	#14
NatCh Gizmologist Posts: 11,615 Karma: 929550 Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Republic of Texas Embassy at Jackson, TN Device: Pocketbook Touch HD3	Any more news on the officially "mobile" version of MobileRead, Alexander? They just foisted a giant Crackberry on my and took away my reasonable sized pager, I'd like to get some sort of use out of the trade. (I see you've added yet more new smilies )