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Wednesday, July 19, 2017

[SITE] Turning Off Mobile View, A Participatory Experiment

Sometimes it is humbling to look back on what we done, and how many people are affected by it. How long has it been already now?

With somewhere around 10% to 20% of our page views, it is no doubt mobile platforms are a not-insignificant source of our audience. And for that group, currently we have been setting the mobile view as the default layout on mobile platform (more like leaving it like that). Well yes, it is kinda designed to be slim for the smaller screens, but I myself and other frequent readers have noticed that some of its unfriendly designs that can ruin their experience:
  • even the slightest sideways movement can trigger the mobile view's mechanic to turn pages, making it tough to navigate already and almost arduous at some of our wider content like song lists and Ranking Dojo lists
  • most of our links are at the top- and sidebars, and the mobile view shows none of them
  • ...as well as the chatbox and social media applets, which accounts for like 80% of reader interaction we have
  • if you don't want mobile view due to the above reasons and more, changing to desktop view only works with the current session because it's not the default, so you have to change it very often

So starting today and as a prelude to an upcoming event, we will be turning off the forced mobile view like a participatory experiment of sorts. By the end of that event, we will be asking for your feedback on whether we should keep mobile view off of the default.

So what is that event, after all that? Heh... (slips away)