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HB Formatted for a small screen device?

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Link to "HB Formatted for a small screen device?"by mhoy on Sat Jan 03, 2009 6:15 pm

Having just purchased a nifty HTC G1, I've found that browsing the HB website is a tad tedious. The 320 x 480 screen is just too small for getting around on the site. Doable, but a pain. Any thoughts on having a smaller equivalent? Yeah, I know mobile browsers are < 1% of the readers.... http://www.upsdell.com/BrowserNews/stat.htm but the number of iPhones and Gphones is growing. :D

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Link to "HB Formatted for a small screen device?"by HB on Sat Jan 03, 2009 6:35 pm

Would the RSS feed suffice?

rss.xml (all posts)
news/rss.xml (topics only)

There is also an RSS feed per forum that your browser should recognize (Firefox shows an RSS feed icon in the address bar; click it to subscribe). While not shown as an RSS feed in the browser, there is also a digest:

digest/rss.xml

It shows a trimmed version of the posts; in most cases that's enough for you to decide if it's interesting enough to go to the original.
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Link to "HB Formatted for a small screen device?"by mhoy on Sun Jan 04, 2009 2:12 am

I've never really used an RSS feed, it's just not the same. Also jumping on an interesting thread is harder. Just tried it. Kinda OK in that I can figure out what thread to take a better look at.

I also really, really like how a thread once read shows the 'unread' icon when new stuff occurs. With 3-5 browsers running around the house/work, having them all sync'd is kinda wonderful.

Mark

Edited: Tried out rss.
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Link to "HB Formatted for a small screen device?"by HB on Sun Jan 04, 2009 1:08 pm

Sorry, I searched and found no mobile-friendly templates for phpBB (this one is in development and shows some promise; this one claims mobile friendliness in two minutes). A quick test of sizing the standard template to ~320 pixels was laughably bad. Your mobile device should have lots of good RSS feed readers. If so, what would need to be improved to make it more HB-friendly?

It's surprising that nobody has developed a really good mobile template for phpBB. I'll ask around again.
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Link to "HB Formatted for a small screen device?"by buzzmccowan on Sun Jan 04, 2009 4:27 pm

Hey there,
90% of the browsing I've been doing on HB in the last 5 months has been on my iPhone. I subscribed to the RSS feed through google reader on my iPhone (which just opens in the browser, not a special app just for iPhone). It doesn't show the body of the message, just the topic heading which is repeated anytime there is a reply. The nice thing is if you choose to "open original" (that is, view the post), it gives you a compressed version, still with images but compressed down, which means fast loading. Not sure if that helps you much.
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Link to "HB Formatted for a small screen device?"by Vater5B on Thu Jan 08, 2009 8:31 pm

On my BlackBerry Curve, I've been using Opera Mini to read the forums with a great deal of success. I'm sure they are working on a version for Android, so I would keep my eyes peeled for it.
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Link to "HB Formatted for a small screen device?"by EspressoObsessed on Fri Jan 09, 2009 5:43 pm

I have a Sony Ericsson Xperia (made by HTC, btw) which uses WinMo. I haven't tried Opera Mini yet, which I hear is good. But using the pre-installed Opera Mobile browser is not too painful. If you double click on the screen, you get a resized & proportional screen. Just set your font to the size that's comfortable and you're good to go. Not sure if the G1 is a touch screen, but if it is you can move very easily around each web page.
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Link to "HB Formatted for a small screen device?"by Michal on Mon Jan 19, 2009 1:57 am

After HB has moved to the faster server my iPhone can no longer access the forum. On the home page I get text saying the DNS has been changed blah blah so I reset all safari settings, cookies, etc. and do a hardware restart and software restore to find it still doesn't work. When I go to forum I get a plain white page. Is anyone experiencing this?
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Link to "HB Formatted for a small screen device?"by RapidCoffee on Mon Jan 19, 2009 3:48 am

No, works fine on my iPod Touch. Probably a server farm DNS problem. Hang in there for a few more days and it may magically go away.
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Link to "HB Formatted for a small screen device?"by jpreiser on Mon Jan 19, 2009 4:27 am

Works fine from my Nokia E71 on AT&T.

FYI, I had similar problems from a PC while connected to one network until the DNS caches got refreshed.
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Link to "HB Formatted for a small screen device?"by Lockman on Mon Jan 19, 2009 5:31 am

Oh Well, one down for G1... I got that E71 as well. Nice phone! Tilt got retired. :)
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Link to "HB Formatted for a small screen device?"by Michal on Mon Jan 19, 2009 10:45 am

It started working today!
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Link to "HB Formatted for a small screen device?"by portamento on Mon Jan 19, 2009 6:58 pm

Dan,

Have you seen this?

http://www.homebaristaapp.com/

Doesn't appear to have any association with home-barista.com, but I do wonder what forum is displayed when one clicks on "Coffee Talk".

The graphic design is top-notch, but this native iPhone app doesn't look terribly useful.
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Link to "HB Formatted for a small screen device?"by HB on Mon Jan 19, 2009 8:34 pm

Alas, the cost of choosing a site name using household words. I don't have the legal war chest to fight trademark battles. I did however leave a comment indicating this site and their application are not affiliated. :evil:
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Link to "HB Formatted for a small screen device?"by Michal on Mon Jan 19, 2009 8:53 pm

What a useless app! Here is an excerpt from the app "Turn your machine on and place your small espresso glass on the top to warm it up" but it's still better than than Barista for Starbucks(R) app which tells you how to say your drink in "starbucks talk".
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