Official Mumsnet mobile thread numéro deux

[RebeccaMumsnet]

Hi all,

As you know we have launched the new mobile site, we know it's a big change and we are still very keen to get it right with your help. This is very much a version that will evolve with your help as part of the testing process.

There have been a few glitches that have/are being ironed out and the HUGE thread has nearly maxed out, so we thought it best to start a shiny new one.

We know change is tricky but, as with most things MN, we are all ears and happy to look at any feedback you have on ways we can improve the new site.

Thanks all

Amy, Rowan,

On my old HTC am still in glaring white, still with disobedient blue bar, still going to p.1 not latest, see post on about p.15, and empty circles at the top, with one empty at the bottom ( the middle one).

Can't afford to replace HTC, only use MN on mobile.

Also battery devouring.

Help, please.

In fact I take it back. I keep hiding the shortcut buttons and they keep coming back.

And posting an issue still. It posts, but then the little dotted circle updating gets stuck, so you think nothing is happening. Far from it, your post has been sent. But the screen remains frozen.

I still love MN. Every teenager has his or her problems, MN no different. And great responses today.

Or maybe it's just user error.

Mardy, if so happens to me too, see disobedient blue bar.

A/R,

If I do ask for TIO, I get put on the latest one, not the full menu.

This is a new problem, was fine yesterday.

Mardy, if so happens to me too, see disobedient blue bar.

A/R,

If I do ask for TIO, I get put on the latest one, not the full menu.

This is a new problem, was fine yesterday.

Sorry about double post.

@MardyBra

Or maybe it's just user error.

Dunno Mardy, let's test it out...

Anyone else finding that they are hiding the shortcut bar but it keeps coming back?

@ancientbuchanan

Mardy, if so happens to me too, see disobedient blue bar.

A/R,

If I do ask for TIO, I get put on the latest one, not the full menu.

This is a new problem, was fine yesterday.

Sorry Ancient, not quite sure what you mean here. Do like the idea of MN being a troublesome teenager though

Re your elderly HTC: we're afraid we do need to prioritise fixing things so that they work on relatively up-to-date devices, OSs and browsers. So it may be that some older devices and browsers will be glitchy and we may not be able to do much about that, in the short/medium term at least. Sorry.

Rowan I did suggest nicely yesterday that if MNHQ upgraded my phone, I'd probably manage. I'm sure I've generated enough advertising revenue over the years

Is there any way of having a TIO option without having the blue bar. On my ancient iphone, there's virtually no space for thread with the bar and the advert. I tend to navigate mainly through TIO and Active.

gotab 740rs
android 4.0.3
kernel 3.0.8
firefox aurora 20.0a2

my problems - very few pictures on my blue bar. (active and I'm on are missing)
and under the text box I'm missing the one one the right.
in my ellipses box I only have pictures for the first two.(report and pm)
page loading is slow.
don't know about battery use because it's erratic anyway.
when I tyrn from portrait to landscape I get tsken to the top of the last post I can see on the portrait view, which is a lot further down than I was before.
also, in my "recent tabs" preview before I open mn, it says "mumsnet discussions" for every page - it used to say the specific page I was on.

most of my problems are with presentation, which issues make it impossible for me to use the site.
I've already said in great detail what I don't like, the biggest of which are I need a bar to separate posts and I need to go to latest posts from tio.
I would love a customizable blue bottom bar because i think it's a great feature if it's got the right things on it.

Ooh. The blue bar jumped temporarily to the middle of the screen just now. Excitement.

oh, the colour contrasts on my posts and the op's posts are too pale.

and I agree totally with whoever it was that said we need the mn emblem at the top - the picture is easier to recognise than the word, and it's an integral part of your branding so it is wrong that it's missing.

I was on a Kindle Fire before I abandoned it because of a massive headache btw. That flashing ad at the top of the screen and the white glare was bloody dangerous.

Also impossible to navigate around the mobile site. (On desk top now at my PC, temporarily.)

@MardyBra

Rowan I did suggest nicely yesterday that if MNHQ upgraded my phone, I'd probably manage. I'm sure I've generated enough advertising revenue over the years

Is there any way of having a TIO option without having the blue bar. On my ancient iphone, there's virtually no space for thread with the bar and the advert. I tend to navigate mainly through TIO and Active.

I will add 'new phones for all MNers' to the list

You can access TIO from the sub-menu. (NB you must be logged in to see the sub-menu: it's under the downward-pointing chevron under the three main icons in the top right of the page)

Re the moving ads

There's the Peugeot one
& the German IVF one
& I've also had a Guardian one

There's a techie post (from a regular poster, not a tech) up thread somewhere which says that these ads will be at least partly responsible for the high battery use (as well as doing people's heads in because they're so in your face)

It was worth a shot Rowan. And thanks for the TIO info.

@nickelbabe

gotab 740rs android 4.0.3 kernel 3.0.8 firefox aurora 20.0a2

my problems - very few pictures on my blue bar. (active and I'm on are missing)
and under the text box I'm missing the one one the right.
in my ellipses box I only have pictures for the first two.(report and pm)
page loading is slow.
don't know about battery use because it's erratic anyway.
when I tyrn from portrait to landscape I get tsken to the top of the last post I can see on the portrait view, which is a lot further down than I was before.
also, in my "recent tabs" preview before I open mn, it says "mumsnet discussions" for every page - it used to say the specific page I was on.

most of my problems are with presentation, which issues make it impossible for me to use the site.
I've already said in great detail what I don't like, the biggest of which are I need a bar to separate posts and I need to go to latest posts from tio.
I would love a customizable blue bottom bar because i think it's a great feature if it's got the right things on it.

Thanks nickel. Will pass these on.

I'm testing a screenprint too, because yesterday trying to insert a screenprint crashed my browser.
I prefer the text of your quote, mnhq, whereas some people might prefer a wider spaced text like the rest of the typing.
it would be cool if there were accessibility options like choosing text spacing "condensed" "normal" "wide"

(and I don't gave a paperclip)

We agree flickering/moving ads are a bit much and we've asked our ad team to disable them - will report back on that.

This is the techie post I mentioned - it was posted by Sherborne (I thought I'd copied in the header but apparently not)

The question of ads and battery usage is interesting. Looking at the src, they're delivered by google ad's, which in turn are delivering ad's from RadiumOne. Looking at one of the URLs, it has a Lat and Lng, indicating my position (one of the ad's is for a bus company in my area, so they're obviously location targeted advertising, even if just at a course grained level). This in itself would use greater battery than just presenting a standard ad image. Then making it animate would also increase battery usage.

Looking at the page loading in a mobile browser, there were 206 requests to the server. Each one of those is transmitting data from the browser to the site and back again. Each one of those requests consumes battery. Some of those requests are to MN itself, while a good number are directly to tracking and advertising sites.

One of the tenet's of mobile web design is to reduce as far as possible the number of requests back and forth to the server so as to reduce radio usage, processing and thus battery consumption.

Some of those could easily be solved my MN (ie, combining the individual smiley images into a single image, for example), but there are so many scripts loading from other sites that no wander it's going slow. Eg:

rubiconproject.com
google-analytics.com
adnxs.com
cloudfront.com
facebook.com
googlestndication.com
pintrest.com
gwallet.com
voicefive.com
doubleclick.com
... and more...!

and so on.... each of these loading things from the web. Each of these use more battery.

Sherborne Fri 22-Aug-14 13:32:49
(Of course, Ad's have to be here, but surely there is a balance to be struck?)

Rowan, you still haven't really and truly said why or what prompted the decision to change the mobile site. In an earlier post you said it was to update, modernise and make it look slicker. If that's really the case, then it's an abject failure. The new site does not look more modern, in fact it looks messy and cluttered. The old site looked cleaner, clearer and more professional.

The functionality issues with the new site are terrible, you are making extra work for your users - why? Why are users having to scrabble around customising and bookmarking in order to get the site to work at a fraction of the functionality the old site did? The old site had one press for most of the things people access, the new site doesn't. So, the new site is not easier or quicker, so what's the point?

Distinguishing between threads in active or on any of the topics is not easy, they all merge into one, it's too crowded with the stupid circles with numbers in them.

Reading threads, again, it is awful, the lack of differentiation between posters, posts, the OP not being at the top of each page, etc., means it all merges into one homogeneous mass. Normally I spend many a late night hour whiling away the insomnia by reading MN, last night after 20 minutes I was starting to get a headache, and was losing interest, it was too much like hard work so I switched it off. I will use the desktop site on my old creaky laptop but doubt I will bother with the mobile site much anymore.

I agree there were some minor design and functionality issues that could have been improved on the old mobile site, but you have thrown the baby out with the bathwater with the new design. Most of the people complaining about the new site seem to have the latest modern phones, tablets and browsers and yet they all say the old site worked better on them so who, or what devices were these changes actually done for?

I currently have a text only advert tat keeps changing text every couple of seconds.

you have to have a rule that all adverts on the static bar do not have any movement in them

This image demonstrates nicely how much more text can be squeezed in using the MNHQ quoting font/spacing than with the normal posting version

again with adverts c if it had a thick blue bar under the advert instead of a very fibe blue bar, it would be more obvious that it was separate and wouldn't move.
at the moment, the fact that everything syddenly disappears when it's obviously not the top of the page is very disorientating.