As part of our fundraiser, we promised we’d improve how Naked Capitalism rendered on mobile devices, since I understand it has been quite a mess. That project got delayed, in part because doing the basics was a major undertaking. The reason the site experience was poor for mobile users was that in our redesign a couple of years ago, the CSS had not been coded properly, and our designer had hard-coded a bunch of kludges to make it sorta work. And “sorta work” was apparently not far from “not working at all”.
Redoing the CSS is tantamount to a redesign of everything below the template level. It’s like rewiring a house. That means we did not redesign the site in the way most users would think of a redesign, a nor have we created a mobile version. Instead our WordPress jockey Mike Lacourse has instead redone the CSS so that the desktop version (hopefully) is reformatted nicely for various mobile devices. But from a technical standpoint, the amount of reccoding was on the order of what a “redesign” would entail.
Our intern Jessica tested the CSS revamp on the most popular mobile device with a group of NC readers who volunteered to help. We made additional tweaks based on their feedback.
Hopefully mobile users will see a big improvement and will now find it more feasible to read NC on their devices. If you have issues, please give us information about your device (model and OS) and tell us about any anomalies you are experiencing. Thanks!
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Works fine on my Fairphone with Android 4.2!
iPad feedback: the two lower ad blocks in the right hand side bar/column seem to be stretched horizontally and as a result are partially cut off on the right.
Original iPad Feedback. Same problem with ad bar/columns on the right. No worries; I plan to upgrade my tablet anyway. Otherwise, works well.
Never had any issues on my Moto G Android.
On my iPhone 6 Plus, there’s a pretty big size difference between portrait and landscape.
Portrait: http://i.imgur.com/nvanF1O.png
And landscape: http://i.imgur.com/TN75Rfy.png
I would choose a little bigger for portrait, and a little smaller for landscape.
I actually really liked landscape with the previous layout (with the ads). I didn’t have to zoom in at all.
(PS: the “link” button has crashed Safari three times in a row now.)
I agree with the print-size comments here. In addition, the orange return-to-top button is a problem, especially in landscape orientation where it is so huge (iPhone 5s, current iOS) that it reduces the readable part of the screen by half by covering the right part of each line in the lower half of the screen. The button is unnecessary in my view, and I’d love to see it disappear, simply because readable screen area is so critical in the mobile world. Or the button’s diameter could perhaps be halved, and it could be moved further into its corner until its circumference touches the screen edge, where it would be just as useful but far less destructive.
I need to move between comment and post a lot. I like the return-to-top button. I don’t notice it on the iPad, since all it covers is part of the sidebar, but I can see how it might seem excessive to an actual cellphone user (all I can do is look at a simulator in XCode).
Looks good on my Galaxy S4 with Android 5.0.1!
Much better, less clutter and visual confusion.
It was super on my iPod this morning-thank you so much!!
Looks great! I’m viewing it on an “old” phone, a Samsung Galaxy S2, and the formatting is much improved. I know you’re not keen on high tech surveillance devices, but thanks for thinking of us poor dupes with smartphones!
I saw it last night and think it looks great. I do agree with one of the above comments that the ‘return to top’ button is a little oversized. My mobile is an iPhone 4, 8.1.3
On my iPad 2, perhaps 1/8 of the sidebar is cropped; that is, not only the ads, but the occasional extremely long comment title is cropped. This is true in both horizontal and vertical views. Text is readable though!
A noticeable and worthwhile improvement (iPad mini w/ retina).
Much improved on iPhone 6 plus!
Working fine on my Nexus 5. As an aside, maybe it has something to do with the revamp, but all names appear italicized now on the desktop version.
I know, I’m not happy with that either. I think we can get that resolved.
I was a loud whiner about NC’s overly small font on the iPhone5 some months ago. The new site looks great. I found only one minor issue in my testing.
Platform: iPhone5, OSX 8.3
Browers: Dolphin v8.7.0
Further app testing: v5.7.0
The only issue noted is with color inverted nighttime mode. If the app simply dimmed the back light without changing the color scheme, your site rendered correctly.
If the app inverts colors like Digg does, background white to black, black font to white, the site did not render correctly. White background rendered as black. Article titles like “Check out our improved mobile version” rendered to red. Article font remained black, making for black font on black background.
White / black inversions are a common display change for night time mode and accessibility for visually challenged people.
Thanks for the excellent feedback!
Can I say that I find the “post author” prefix not so great? I mean, we know who Yves and Lambert are?
Yes, I took issue with that too! We should be able to get that fixed.
This is awesome. I thought the problems with the old design were just something to adjust to so I’m surprised and thrilled about the new coding. I’m impressed it isn’t a separate mobile site but rather compatible doing. I do agree the type size and return-to-top button could be smaller in landscape but that’s minor. Kudos to the technical team.
While we have mobile users’ attention….
Are there any mobile apps that you use very often? I’m thinking of apps that are much more from the mobile world, and that don’t have a significant presence in the desktop world (i.e., not Facebook and Twitter).
SnapChat? Instagram? Line? Vine? Periscope? Meerket? Vertical apps created by content services, e.g. Reuters, BBC, Bloomberg… Anything… Thank you!