Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Why Do Mobile Versions of Websites Suck?
First time accepted submitter Kelbear writes "As user traffic over mobile devices grows in leaps and bounds, it's surprising to me as a layman that so many companies still have crippled and broken mobile pages in late 2013. There must be justifiable reasons for this, so: Fellow Slashdotters, can you please share the obstacles you've seen in your own companies that have delayed or defeated efforts to develop competent mobile sites? Are the issues in obtaining or maintaining compatibility driven by platform owners like Apple and Google?"
The mobile version chokes up my browser so badly that I frequently just close the tab and move on to other sites. It's very annoying that I can't see the regular site from my iPad. (Maybe if I logged, but I don't want to log in)
The mobile version of Slashdot sucks hard.
SJWs are the new boogeyman. -Me
Maybe a year or two ago, Slashdot on mobile was great. It looked and functioned relatively similarly to the full site, but was formatted for narrow phone screens. It worked great. You could read comments, configure the comments, post comments, and moderate. It was, in my opinion, a perfect blend of the functionality of the full site with a mobile-optimized site. Sadly, Dice threw that all out and now we have the horrid mobile slashdot site. Ironically the traditional desktop site is more usable on the mobile screen than the mobile site. The new slashdot beta, on the other hand, well it just proves Dice doesn't really understand what this site it bought actually is.
Kudos to the submitter for managing to submit a story that really is, "why does slashot mobile suck?" but in a form that the story moderators accepted.
Once the beta desktop site goes live, I expect to see a story, "Why do site redesigns suck?" Sadly participating in that conversation will be much more difficult as even figuring out how to read comments in a sane way seems to be impossible with the new beta, let alone posting!
Modern phones don't really need a mobile version of a site. As a user I usually find myself forcing the "desktop" version of the site when I can. As a web developer I usually tell people not to waste their money on a mobile version. Most mobile sites suck because someone decided they needed a mobile version either for cool factor or to please a boss. They didn't have a good budget and cut corners on every aspect. There are use cases where a website should be done in a mobile format and can be useful when the budget is available.
Lets start with good mobile sites. Those that should be mobile. These are sites that someone might access while actually on the go or need to do something quick. Think directions or ordering food. Most people don't want to shop Target from their phone. However a lot of people want to get directions to the closest Target. A good mobile site would prioritize the directions/location aspect. That works for retail and your standard service businesses. The other type is restaurants that deliver. When you are sitting in front of your TV and want to order a pizza, you obviously are in lazy mode. A restaurant mobile website can make the ordering process simple and quick. These are examples of use cases where mobile sites work and and should be used.
I think most mobile sites fall in the category of "we need a mobile site" This is where there is no budget and the client is offered a shitty mobile site so a developer can make a quick buck with buzz words. These sites tend to be created with generators or a general theme on a Wordpress site. Nothing special and usually makes the experience worse.
The last category is what you asked about. A good mobile friendly website. These are sites that don't fall into the restaurant/location (however I consider those ones that don't suck) category because they need more than just directions or ordering pizza. These types of sites cost a lot to develop. Developing a true user friendly mobile site is not easy. Think about developing a site for IE7, IE8, IE9, Safari, FF, and Chrome. Fairly standard a year or so ago. It took time. Now multiply that by 10. Ok so now you know the time involved to develop and test a good mobile site. However you only have a Galaxy S4 to test on. So now you need to go purchase multiple iPhones, multiple Android phones, a few iPads and maybe a few Android tablets. You can now start debugging on all these devices. Good luck! Oh and then ask your customers if they care. The ROI is not there.
This is why mobile sites suck. No one wants to invest the money to do it right. Even those that do invest the money either focus on a single platform or can't keep up with the ever changing community of mobile devices.
Taking some of the points from above you realize that you should just have a normal site and let people deal with zooming (pinching) in and out to click on links. Or maybe go for an app if you have something specialized.
Obligatory:
http://xkcd.com/869/
Thanks to CSS3's media queries, no site should need a "mobile version." You design one site and have it modify itself based on the browser's size. A good example of this is the Boston Globe's site. Go to the site in Chrome or FireFox (not IE) in a large, but not maximized browser. Now slowly resize the browser, making it smaller and smaller. As you do, the site will reconfigure itself from full-fledged desktop site to small-screen mobile site (with quite a few steps in between).
The benefit of this is, of course, that you don't need to maintain two or three different sites. You maintain one site and modify it to suit different sized browsers. Compare this to a mobile site which needs to redirect users to a different URL and often needs a completely separate development effort.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Get a device with a big enough screen, and the internet isn't painful anymore. It's that simple.
Heh. That doesn't always help. A lot of the Internet is painful by design. They make it that way with malice aforethought.
A trivial example in the window I'm typing in right now: There's a horizontal scroll bar at the bottom of this /. window. OK, it has a width= attribute that shouldn't be there that's forcing it to a fixed width, right? Nope. I grabbed one of the resize handles on the window's border, and resized it a few times. No matter what size I made it on my (rather large) screen, the /. window is sized to be slightly wider than that. It dynamically detects the size, and forces the content to be wider.
This is fairly common, and the solution is trivial: Remove all the width= and other size attributes. There's nothing in this /. page that requires such things, and without them, the browser will "flow" the text so that everything fits. But /., like so many sites, tries doing something "clever" (i.e., dumb) with the sizes, and as a result, there's nothing I can do to make it fit.
This is known in legal circles as "with malice aforethought". The developers understand the problem quite well. If they didn't, they wouldn't be smart enough to use HTML in the first place. So they must be doing it intentionally.
And I've seen why this can happen. I've worked on a number of projects that needed a web interface. On many of them, I've gotten explicit orders that the pages must be sized to specific width, so they'll fit in the window the boss wants to use on his desktop. If the boss's desired size isn't the default, it won't be accepted. This sort of idiocy is quite common, and it's not easy to fight.
Actually, I have "fixed" it on a number of projects. These were cases where we had a good reason to have all pages delivered by a CGI program that parses the client's request, runs appropriate data-fetching and -munging subprocesses, and formats the results in HTML. I sneak in a little check of the HTTP_USER_AGENT, and if it's IE (which is the only browser that such bosses know exists), my code generates the required width= attributes; else it produces no sizing instructions at all. The results usually work fine on anything from a dumb "smartphone" to a humongous window on a humongous display. Or a small browser window on your screen, whatever it is. And it meets the boss's requirement for a fixed width on his screen.
So far, I haven't been caught performing such treachery by any of my bosses, but it's probably only a matter of time. They often believe that their web sites need only work on screens exactly like the one on their desk, and they explicitly order their developers to do it that way, or else.
This is just one of the many reasons for the problem we're discussing. It's yet another example of the old one about not attributing something to malice which may be explained by stupidity. (Quick, without googling it, which famous writer is that usually attributed to? ;-)
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
But I do use my smartphone far more often than I anticipated -- if I want to Google some curiosity while sitting on the couch, find a recipe to use something that is on special at the grocery store, or if I'm chatting with someone (in real life) and I need to forward them an email, or document something with a photograph, or take a quick note without rounding up a pen and paper:
That's what concerns me, and why I don't get one. I'd keep finding more and more stuff I can do with it, and then pretty soon, I'm another little glowing screen zombie bumping into people in the supermarket because I'm fucking updating my goddamn Facebook status to tell everyone I'm buying olives and free-range soda pop at Whole Foods, and then I realize -- Holy shit OMG FML -- I have just become one of those little glowy-screen-zombie fuckers I dreaded. So I post my existential crisis on Google+ and Twitter it while I Instagram out a photo of this killer deal they have on red snapper. But wait! This app tells me that red snapper is cheaper at Trader Joes by a half a buck a pound, so I dash out to the car, bumping in to only 3 other Twatterers on the way out of the store, use my GPS nav to find my way the 4 blocks west to the other store.
Then I post on Facebook wondering how come I don't have any free time any more... and check it every 3 minutes to see who "liked" that and who didn't, and OMG! my sister in law just posted some new pictures (8,000 so far this month -- it's a newborn!) of her daughter -- so cute! So I like like like, right? Then I forget why I came to Trader Joe's, so I check my history... nope. Why did I come here? Aww, cute cat videos! Oh hell, I didn't check the NFL scores today, lemme do that real quick while I'm driving 10mph below the speed limit in the fast lane... etc etc etc.
Anyway, yeah. Basically, I don't want to become... you or any other little touchy screeny zombie. Because you know what? I plan my shopping. I download recipes, but I don't need them *at the store*. If I need to Google something, I get my ass off the couch and walk to my office. Same goes for forwarding emails. There is absolutely nothing internet-ish that is so fucking important that it can't wait til I get to my computer. There is nowhere, and no wait, so awfully boring that I can't amuse myself thinking, knitting, or reading a book.
Most of all, I live. Life is just fine without constant electronic distraction.
Sure, my friends tell me, "get a smart phone! You'll love it!" I'd probably love cocaine, too, which is why I don't try it.
That I'm right, and you don't like it, doesn't mean I'm a troll.