Please test the "AnandTech Forums for Mobile Devices" website.

[yllus]

Hi everyone. I've made the initial updates needed to adapt the AnandTech Forums mobile website I wrote a while back to vBulletin. Logging in and replies need to be looked at, but your basic viewing of thread lists and messages is ready to rock.

The URL:

http://atforums.mobi/

Let me know if it's awful and/or any suggestions you may have. Thank you.

New Features

- Updated site to work with vBulletin!
- Paging added for threads. Long threads with hundreds of replies now load in a reasonable amount of time; thread pages have 40 replies max.
- Add the ability to log in.
- Allow for the posting of replies.

--

How It Works

The first page is a straight rip of the sidebar text from when you're logged in. The links have been changed to point to a local page, though.

When you click on a forum category, the script grabs the 20 topics listed on the page and displays their titles to you. Clicking on a thread loads a parsed version of the Printable View page, reformatted for better compatibility and readability with a mobile device browser.

Some other features: Adjustable font sizes (see bottom of the Category Listing page), improved load speed and the ability to reply to threads.


What I'd Like Feedback On

1. Does it work for you? (If it didn't, what kind of bug appeared?)
2. What device(s) did you test it upon?
3. What do you think of the font size? Bigger, smaller, just right?
4. Would you change anything?


To-Do List

- Nothing planned at this time.


Updates

- Added "Originator" name.
- Added alternating thread title background colours.
- The logo image now links back to the categories list.
- New URL! Now hosted by alm99 at http://atforums.mobi/
- 'Fixed' the Printable View; thanks to Unheard who wrote the parser for this task!
- Added the ability to log in and post to a thread! See this thread on documentation upon maintaining a session through PHP CURL.
- Added a font size selector option (store current font size in session).
- Changed the individual thread view to UTF-8 encoding.
- Added a stripslashes() call to the posting code.
- Added alternating font colours for quoted text. I'm not sure how many mobile device browsers support this, but if you're having trouble distinguishing quoted text from the actual reply in a thread, look around for an option to allow HTML colours to be displayed.
- Added the Health and Fitness category to the list of available forums.
- Fixed the warnings shown when posting a reply to the forums.
- Added "Bottom of Page" and "Top of Page" links to the message view.


Working Devices

- Nokia 770, Nokia 800, N95 8GB
- BlackBerry 8700, BlackBerry 8703e, BlackBerry 8800
- Treo 650, Treo 680, Treo 700WX
- Motorola A1200, Motorola Q, Q9C
- LG VX8600, LG VX9900
- T-Mobile Sidekick, T-Mobile Dash, T-Mobile MDA
- Apple iPhone
- Sprint PPC-6700 / UTStarcom PPC-6700 / HTC Apache
- Sanyo MM-8300


Non-Working Devices

All devices should now work fine, as we've stopped using the Printable View on Fusetalk.

 

[newnameman]

Works for me.

 

[GeekDrew]

1. Define "work". I personally wouldn't use it for anything since it can't handle authentication, anything more advanced than the print view, etc. But given your apparent goals, yes, it works well.

2. Treo 680

3. Text size is great for me.

4. I'd, oh, I don't know, make it more like the Mobi style that vBulletin can use. I use it every day for my own forums, and while it's far from perfect, I think that it's much more useful than this is (at least in its current version).

5. I don't have an AnandTech related URL, but I can handle PHP and have bandwidth to spare.

 

[Leros]

Looks pretty good to me. I wish there was some way we could log in and post too. But this is a great start.

I'm on a Motorola A1200. Text size is fine, etc is fine.

 

[yllus]

Okay. I was worried about the text size because the Joystiq mobile page uses an 8-pt font and that seemed worth copying, but I always thought that was a bit small. Site's using 10-pt Arial for now (and should be resizable in your mobile browser).

I agree that logging in and all the features that would open up would be handy, but that starts getting into the rather time-consuming sort of space. I'd also be rather impressed if any of you had the poor sense to input your forum username and password into my site, but maybe I'm just held in that high regard around here.

I think I can promise the ability to log in and post to threads in the future, if we make the assumption that mobile browsers can support frames (maybe IFRAMEs)? The top frame would be the printable view like now, the bottom frame would be a TEXTAREA field with a submit button to post to the thread. You'd log in from the Category List page, and your credentials would be passed to post the thread. More research is required.

I just added the forum category name and page number to the category view page. I think that'll do it for tonight.

 

[pstylesss]

Ok, heres my review. I'm on an LG vx8600. The first page shows up great. I could use a smaller text, a lot of the categories are on two lines, but its not a big deal. When you click into a forum, I would like to have every other colour grey, so it separates each post. When you view a post, its in bold, and the text seems a little big for me - but it works.

ygpm.

 

[jagec]

I was able to get into the subforum (OT, etc), but if I click on a thread I get "MIC Error 902: internal browser error."

This is on a Samsung A840, with the Worst Browser Ever?, so I wouldn't worry too much about it.

 

[Kaspian]

Everything works fine till I click on a thread. The I get a "unknown format." error.

 

[Twista]

ill test it out on my sidekick later today for you.

edit:

Actually, ill test it now.

Everything works perfect for me. Perfect font size and everything and no errors given at all when clicking on a thread.

Device? Tmobile Sidekick id

 

[uli2000]

Looks excellent on my PPC6700

 

[yllus]

Originally posted by: jagec
I was able to get into the subforum (OT, etc), but if I click on a thread I get "MIC Error 902: internal browser error."

This is on a Samsung A840, with the Worst Browser Ever?, so I wouldn't worry too much about it.

Originally posted by: Kaspian
Everything works fine till I click on a thread. The I get a "unknown format." error.

Wow, haha. Unfortunately I can't do anything about the thread view, since all I do with that is link to the printable view of the thread in FuseTalk itself. I guess I'll try to bring the issue to the notice of FuseTalk's developers. Kaspian, what mobile device did you use?

When I get home tonight I'll add alternating colours so it's easy to visually distinguish between one thread and the next. Then perhaps we'll experiment with the frames/IFRAME usage to add the ability to post in threads.

This was fun, I used my Nokia 770 to browse the site while waiting for my doctor's appointment. Please keep the feedback coming.

 

[Wonderful Pork]

sprint m610 using EVDO

looks great. Only suggestion is to put a line in between posts/posters.

 

[MikeyIs4Dcats]

works well on my blackberry.

any way to block signatures in posts?

 

[Kaspian]

Originally posted by: yllus
[. Kaspian, what mobile device did you use?

oOOps, sorry Nokia 6126.

 

[yllus]

Updated the site. Added two new features:

- Added "Originator" name.
- Added alternating thread title background colours.

Originally posted by: MikeyIs4Dcats
works well on my blackberry.

any way to block signatures in posts?

Blocking signatures would require parsing of the thread itself, which is a little more than I'm willing to do for this side project (it'd be pretty complex/annoying). Wish I could though, it'd solve the problems a bunch of you apparently are having.

 

[Zugzwang152]

Working properly for me with an iPhone.

 

[keeleysam]

Works fine on my iPhone, but I still prefer the just coming straight here.

 

[MotionMan]

Works fine for me for what it is.

It is kinda annoying that all the posts are bold, but otherwise, the typeface is fine.

I am using Blazer v.4.0 on a Treo 650.

MotionMan

 

[agibby5]

You'd think there would be some sort of plugin for FuseTalk that would enable this feature natively on the site

 

[yllus]

Thanks to alm99, I've updated the URL to: http://atforums.mobi/

Enjoy.

 

[Gunslinger08]

Looks good on the Motorola Q.

 

[dotcom173]

1. yes, it works. anandtech always loaded very fast for me, but it seems to work much faster, probably because of the lack of unnecessary things
2. apple iphone
3. font size is good, but then again, its easily fixed on an iphone. so, im not a good judge of this.
4. unless it drastically altered load times, id add a little more color or style, just to make it look good. right now, its very bland, especially when i could just go on regular AT and see all the cool colors. ill probably continue to browse standard AT on my phone, solely based on the eye-candy.
5. dont know what that means

 

[Goosemaster]

Originally posted by: joshsquall
Looks good on the Motorola Q.

ditto

 

[Sukhoi]

Works on Sanyo MM-8300. Font size is way too big though...no way I would read the forums on my phone for more than a minute or two with the way it is.

 

[yllus]

Originally posted by: Sukhoi
Works on Sanyo MM-8300. Font size is way too big though...no way I would read the forums on my phone for more than a minute or two with the way it is.

Font size on which pages exactly? The thread lists? The threads themselves?