Browsing PC mobile - user survey on features. Please reply.

[Nick]

If you ever browse PC on your phone, please reply.

When you come on PC on your phone, what are things that are essential? What elements of the forum do you mainly use? What do you not care about at all? What do you think is clutter?

I'm working on a mobile style, and I'm kind of stuck on it right now because I don't really know what to include for profiles and the main forum index. So far, I just have the forum titles for the forum index and nothing else. I don't know whether or not to include the last post, or the forum description, or the new post information, or anything like that.

Do you like to know whose online? Do you read blogs? Do you message users? Do you PM anyone? Do you report posts? Do you moderate, if you're a moderator?

Give me as much information as you can on what you need when you're browsing on your phone and try to think of the things that you normally do when you're mobile that you wish you could do a little easier.

 

[Nick]

For postbit the only information shown is the username, user title, online status, avatar, gender, post content, and tools like editing a post, deleting a post, quoting a post, reporting a post, and liking a post.

 

[Oryx]

Signatures are clutter. Extra information in postbits is clutter. Avatars that aren't all the same size are clutter. Changing a profile and signature is clutter. See a custom profile is clutter.

Having new posts as a link is essential (the one mobile style right now doesn't have that). Being able to look at all the same things in someone's profile, just not necessarily designed, is essential.

 

[Altairis]

When I come on PC on my phone I really just browse and sometimes post, so I would really like it if I didn't have to zoom in each time a page loaded and I would be able to read the text without doing anything first. I know that generally comes with a mobile style but that's all that I really want for a mobile skin haha. I don't really mind seeing signatures and avatars.

 

[Lusus]

When i browse PC on phone, the only annoying thing is that some BGs on some themes overlap everything else while scrolling up or down.

 

[Aquacorde]

I'd prefer avatars be the same size as the postbit if not smaller. I still would like to see signatures but I think it'd be best for them to be automatically turned off for that style if that's an option? As well as postbit info. All that's really necessary imo is username, rank, and avatar. On the forum index I at least want to be able to see if there's new posts in a particular forum. I think it'd be nice for me at least for forums to be collapsed by category, kinda like how wikipedia does for article sections on mobile. I really like being able to see the latest post info, but i think the best way to put that in would be like,

Forum Title
Forum Description (not really necessary but i like it)
--> Subforums
Last Post by User; Day/Time

like I really have to have a primarily vertical layout on mobile that just makes sense. I really like how you had Navigation set up in your blog screenshot. Not exactly sure what to do with notifications- maybe have like Profile (3 New VMs) and Messages (1 New PM) and Control Panel (2 New Notifications). I'd like them visible like that though, somehow.
Looks-wise I like simple gradients and textures but of course nothing heavy on mobile.

I really do everything I do on a computer on mobile. Report, answer all messages, post, like, comment, read blogs, etc. I've even changed sigs via mobile but holy hell do not recommend. Don't care who's online really but would like it to say somewhere- a list is not needed imo but a way to get to the whos online pages or an indicator on the profiles. As for profiles, autohide user customization. that fricks with everything in the world and I even hate my own profile sometimes because I can't hit the view convo button on VMs all the time because it's squished in.
I really like what tumblr does for mobile now tbh and what twitter does normally and maybe like. Have something similar with the profile picture being a header and the avatar kind of floating in the middle with the username&rank underneath? usertitles arent necessary imo. and have the tabs/side boxes in auto-collapsed sections in the usual order because that's way easier idk

The main thing is, I hate that PC's layouts are almost all very horizontal and I have to scroll side-to-side so much on mobile. But the condensed ones feel like they're missing a lot of information for me. Also everything has a giant header is2g. sry this is kind of thought to post without much for filter or organization

 

[El Héroe Oscuro]

Forum Descriptions are unneeded. I think a lot of them are pretty much self explanatory and give a clear cut definition of what you're walking into by the title alone.

Keep blogs because I like reading blogs from my phone while at work. Obviously though I'm probably in the minority when it comes to whether or not it really matters for them to stay, but I enjoy them.

Altairis makes a good point. Having to zoom in just to read the text is a real pain, so being able to have the text normal sized for phones would be extraordinarily useful. I'd be down with sacrificing signatures if that helps to make that happen, but I think avatars should still say to keep things not come off as "blah" when you look at a page. Also, all avatars should be the same size.

 

[Nick]

Yeah, I'm not going to include any forum descriptions.

I'm 90% sure that I'm going to make blogs function as read only. Of course if you have the direct link to creating a blog, you'll be able to create one, but the style won't really be optimized for that page and there won't be any links guiding you to it.

Also, with user styles, there isn't going to be any of that at all. No option to turn it on, either.

Avatars will be maxed out at 150x150, and anything larger will be resized to fit that.

You won't have to zoom in to read text. This is the main reason I'm creating a mobile style, because that's hella annoying.

If you guys are interested in how this style is turning out, I have about six or so pictures posted in the PCmobile style thread in the Style Studio forum. If you have access to that, you can check it out there.

 

[moon]

I post and moderate my forums from my phone. I need to be able to access all the usual mod functions from the index or at least from thread tools. It would be cool if there was a simpler text editor for the mobile skin, like only with basic text decoration, the url and spoiler tags and possibly quote and img tags. Now I type them out manually but maybe that's just my phone/browser being dumb forcing me to do that?

Avatars and signatures are still nice to see.

Nifty and easy to use private message system and visitor message system would be gold. As it is now, VMs don't even work for me on my phone :x (I should reeeally update my browser I guess.....)

I would not need to edit my signature/avatar/profile and I would not need to see customized profiles or a lot of postbit info.

Perhaps the style itself could be simple, but with a couple of different, simple color schemes to choose from like some other styles have? So that you could use the mobile style on your phone, no matter what colors you like or whether you prefer dark or light skins.

 

[El Héroe Oscuro]

Even though it's "read only" for blogs, is it possibly you can still allow commenting to be enabled? I don't ever write blog entries anyways from my phone, but I do like to comment from it.

 

[Nick]

Thanks you guys. :)

Any other "I wants" "I needs" or anything like that? Questions about the style or my plans?

 

[donavannj]

I personally would love to have user customizations and the bulk of the postbit info, as well as being able to comment on blogs (posting new entries isn't anywhere close to essential, though).

Granted, my biggest issue browsing from mobile is typing out responses in quick moving threads or posting links to things, and utilizing the dropdowns in the navbar to go to the various things hidden within them, and the typing bit and copying and pasting links things aren't something any style will help with.

Do you have plans to make the navbar not be dropdowns, or is that something that'll be inherited from the master style?

 

[obZen]

I'm curious, is it possible for the site to detect a mobile browser using the user agent, and redirect the user to https://www.pokecommunity.com/?styleid=271, the mobile layout?

Also, can images resize to something smaller, so the pages don't get pushed out like this:

Spoiler:

Rendering issues:
https://i.imgur.com/gnPtBs9.png
https://i.imgur.com/jB2nkf5.png

However, fine in Landscape:
https://i.imgur.com/7pLsfV3.png

Links in question, respectively:
https://www.pokecommunity.com/threads/333093
https://www.pokecommunity.com/members/19228

Mobile Browserss in question:
Chrome for Android
Firefox for Android
I have tested both links on both browsers.