Mobile Access

This page contains ideas related to use of a mobile device.

Expand: This concept should be reviewed more thoroughly, and improvement ideas should be fleshed out.

Goal

To make using Dreamwidth-based sites from a mobile device a delight.

Background

There are so many ways in which we can make DW the place to share your work if you rely on a mobile device for part of your browsing that we needed somewhere to write them all down.

It's important that users of mobile devices don't feel like they're being shoehorned into something limited. Instead, they should ideally have access to the entire site, in a more elegant and refined manner than panning around the site like agitated ants in a tiny viewport.

Biggest Needs

• A way to reliably detect mobile devices and serve appropriate content (with an override parameter, as well).

Technical Hurdles

• Not all devices implement JavaScript properly, but because they attempt to use JavaScript, they don't fall back on non-JavaScript controls.

Site Scheme

Currently, the lynx scheme (accessible with usescheme=lynx and format=light) is recommended for browsing on mobile devices. This does not change the way the page content is presented, just the navigational style that appears on every page.

/mobile/

/mobile/ is designed specifically for mobile devices and low-bandwidth users, but this hasn't been updated in a long time. Some functionality that should be improved/changed:

• Logged-in users are still given the option to Log in, although they're told before they follow the link that they're already logged in. They're not given a link to log out. This behaviour should be changed.

• Posting content via the mobile interface should not be significantly different from posting via the web interface. Mood should be selectable, location, music, tags, and so on should be editable fields. Cross-posting should be an available option.

Journal Styles

Currently, no journal styles are designed to be used with mobile devices; users are recommended to use /mobile/ for reading entries.

Some features that would make a journal style ideal for a mobile device:

• Single column style.
• No userpics (or small userpics?).

Page Content

Currently, only the /mobile/ pages are specifically designed for mobile browsers. Some pages degrade better than other.

Some pages/functionality that should be improved/changed: