Feedbooks: New Mobile Edition

[Hadrien]

Originally Posted by Jaapjan

Please do keep in mind that I am only offering suggestions!

Of course and those suggestions are very useful so far.

About the images: while creating the mobile version, I hesitated between full text or text+images.

While full text is the best choice for a lighter version, text+images looked way better. Most smartphones are getting better and brighter screens, and I really liked it a lot better with a few images (like m.youtube.com for example). Now if I can find a way to keep these images with a similar quality, yet a smaller size, of course, I'll make these changes.

Concerning the text: for full sentences, I agree, and I'll check every page again, and see if I can make some of them shorter. But when you're browsing, most of the time, the text displayed is for the filters, and in this case, this text is very useful. I have to find a balance between features and the number of elements on the screen. I've removed some of the filters that we use on the main page, but kept those that are really useful. For example, on the page for an author, I consider that it is useful to change the order of the books and switch between title/year/popularity.
For some elements, I've moved them to a separate page: for example similar books and lists. Once I add a way to sign up on the mobile version, I'll also add support for reading and sending comments on a separate page for books/authors/lists.

[Jaapjan]

I am not sure if you're still working on the title/logo image but the fuzzy edge you have now looks a bit odd on some of the browsers I have seen. Yet I cannot find any real evidence on -why- you have this fuzzy edge there around it. Maybe you are using it on different places too? Regardless.. if you remove this fuzzy edge it'll look better and you can scale down all the way to 2 colors for the title image.

And please, I never said to remove graphics! Keep them! It adds color and .. style to the page.

[Gideon]

Yes, unfortunately the books are not readable on the iphone currently - a pdf version would be nice, but you're quite right about the lack of being able to "save" it. Perhaps set something up where iPhone users could email it to themselves so they could keep it in their mailbox?

Site's great... I've been wandering around for a few days now, and I really like it.

Regarding automatic redirect, however... Not a huge fan of that as plenty of phones can and would prefer to use your main page without being forced to go to the mobile site (many smart phones, the iPhone, etc.) I prefer the mobile site on my iphone, but not everyone will. You may want to set the script up to preclude them or offer an option on the mobile site to go back to the full site.

Excellent service. The only thing that sucks (which isn't your fault) is the fact so many of the best feeds are only partial feeds - I get terribly excited and then depressed the moment I open the file and find a sentence instead of an article.

[Jaapjan]

Originally Posted by Gideon

Regarding automatic redirect, however... Not a huge fan of that as plenty of phones can and would prefer to use your main page without being forced to go to the mobile site (many smart phones, the iPhone, etc.)

Truly? I have yet to find a mobile phone/browser where I would prefer the full feedbooks site over the mobile one. But an option back to the main site might be easily put in. Perhaps a cookie or something like that. I do not know. But with my smart phone and dial plan, and all the ones I had before, I -want- mobile versions. Not the full versions.

[Hadrien]

Originally Posted by Jaapjan

I am not sure if you're still working on the title/logo image but the fuzzy edge you have now looks a bit odd on some of the browsers I have seen. Yet I cannot find any real evidence on -why- you have this fuzzy edge there around it. Maybe you are using it on different places too? Regardless.. if you remove this fuzzy edge it'll look better and you can scale down all the way to 2 colors for the title image.

And please, I never said to remove graphics! Keep them! It adds color and .. style to the page.

Yes, I'm working on the logo. I've changed the size from 4,4 to 0,8. I'll put it online once I'm done working on it.

[Gideon]

Well, it depends on the user, really. I just generally find it to be bad practice to automatically force the user into this. I know on the iPhone there are many websites that I do not want to (nor need to) use the mobile site version of. Admittedly, the feedbooks site is very nice in mobile form (and looks great in full form on my iPhone as well) but I just find the "you have to use the mobile site" to be in bad form.

Of course, the iPhone in the States has unlimited data as well - so that isn't the concern (though speed is) - but I'm in wifi areas most the time, I rarely use the data services.

[ProfJulie]

Very nice! Thanks for setting this up. The Kindle Download Guide works great on my Pocket PC.

Attached are two screenprints of the mobile Feedbook website that I made from my Pocket PC.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Hadrien

I'm working on that. I'll edit the first post, you can now use http://feedbooks.mobi

I'll add another alias and redirection next.

It looks nice and works well accessed from my PC. I haven't tried it on my PDA yet.

But that does bring up a question. The Feedbooks site downloads a Mobipocket file as a .mobi file. That works elsewhere, but a Palm device expects a PRC extension. Any chance of an option to download the Mobi file as .prc rather than .mobi? As far as I know, the file is identical. Only the extension differs.
______
Dennis

[Hadrien]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

It looks nice and works well accessed from my PC. I haven't tried it on my PDA yet.

But that does bring up a question. The Feedbooks site downloads a Mobipocket file as a .mobi file. That works elsewhere, but a Palm device expects a PRC extension. Any chance of an option to download the Mobi file as .prc rather than .mobi? As far as I know, the file is identical. Only the extension differs.
______
Dennis

Yes, I can do something about this. I'll leave the extension to .mobi on the main site and change it to .prc on the mobile one.

Update: Done.

[Jaapjan]

Keep up your good work Hadrien!

That said, I have a few small comments. On the OpenWave 7 browser & the Opera Mini browser both the logo you are using has fuzzy edges. These do not display correctly on either one. I think I mentioned this before.

Also, the color of blue you are using on your sitelogo & also in your signature here has a different color of blue inside the letters then outside. I am not sure if this is deliberate?

Edit: Nag nag nag nag nag.

[Hadrien]

Originally Posted by Jaapjan

Keep up your good work Hadrien!

That said, I have a few small comments. On the OpenWave 7 browser & the Opera Mini browser both the logo you are using has fuzzy edges. These do not display correctly on either one. I think I mentioned this before.

Also, the color of blue you are using on your sitelogo & also in your signature here has a different color of blue inside the letters then outside. I am not sure if this is deliberate?

Edit: Nag nag nag nag nag.

I updated the logo, are you sure that you still get the different color and the fuzzy edges on the logo ?

[Jaapjan]

http://www.operamini.com/demo/

[Hadrien]

Originally Posted by Jaapjan

http://www.operamini.com/demo/

When you open the page with Opera, it selects the logo (it's a link) and add a blue edge around it. Is this the problem ?

[Jaapjan]

Baaaahhh! (sheep!)



Okay. Okay.

But to save grace .. I .. err ... suggest you change the TabIndex! Put the start focus elsewhere but on the logo!

Edit: I am still getting different colors of blue inside the letters? See this link.

http://www.feedbooks.com/discover/book/974

[Hadrien]

Anyone tried browsing the mobile website with a Kindle ? I'd love to see how it looks on a Kindle, and if it's easy enough to browse (for example selection the search box, entering text in it etc...).
You can use Alt-Shift-G to make a screenshot on the Kindle, you'll get the file on your SD card.

Originally Posted by Jaapjan

Edit: I am still getting different colors of blue inside the letters? See this link.

http://www.feedbooks.com/discover/book/974

Yeah, usually, I don't deal with the CSS/images on the website, Loïc does.
On the mobile version I did 100% of the work though, and corrected this mistake with the logo. I just updated the files on our SVN with the new logo for the standard website, it'll be uploaded on the www later today. On the mobile version everything should be fine.