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Most "mobile" versions of web sites are objectively worse than their "desktop" versions. Actual advantages of mobile devices are: * High DPI, handheld. You ca

Most "mobile" versions of web sites are objectively worse than their "desktop" versions. Actual advantages of mobile devices are: * High DPI, handheld. You can look at a mobile screen from different distances for different use cases and screen contents. * Less eye movement required than for using a typical HD desktop monitor. This makes it easier to navigate unknown applications / web sites. * Easier to tap anywhere than to click anywhere with a mouse. * 360° scrolling with high accuracy and intuitive control over the velocity. * Zooming with quick and intuitive gestures. Mobile devices are perfect for navigating wide, complex web sites. That's why "mobile" versions that ignore the advantages of mobile devices are usually worse than the desktop versions. How "mobile-optimized" apps / web sites often fail: * Overly large elements and fonts that cannot be zoomed out from. High DPI goes to waste. * Fixed elements that obscure parts of the screen. They make the scrollable area so tiny that you have to move your eye balls quickly when scrolling. * Hiding important elements in hamburger menus or making them inaccessible. Finding stuff has to require multiple taps so that it is even slower than with a mouse. * Horizontal scrolling is evil except in awfully implemented code snippets. It is unimaginable to the modern web developer that someone would double-tap a column of text to read it and scroll around afterwards to discover what else the site has to offer. * Vertical scrolling is too hard even though a touchscreen is perfect for that. All the "important" shit has to be fixed because users would be too stupid to find the menu by scrolling. A fixed "back to top" button is the icing on the modern web cake. * Zooming is too hard so it should be better disabled, bugged or useless.

arkh 9y ago
> * Easier to tap anywhere than to click anywhere with a mouse. > * 360° scrolling with high accuracy and intuitive control over the velocity. > * Zooming with quick and intuitive gestures. I disagree about those. "taping" lack a lot of precision a mouse has. And don't get me started on the typing experience as you can't use all your fingers and have no tactile return. Also Ctrl-F "the thing I'm looking for" anyone ? The intuitive gestures are all but intuitive if you have never used them before. My first reflex to zoom is sure not to move diagonally 2 fingers on a picture.
- cyphar 9y ago
  > Also Ctrl-F "the thing I'm looking for" anyone? I always forget that mobile browsers say "find in page" rather than "search" when you're trying to search for something on the page, so my eyes skim past it all the time in the hamburger menu.
- fiddlerwoaroof 9y ago
  On iOS you can put find in page in the bottom row of the screen that pops up when you hit the share button. I also put request desktop site there for easy access (although I recently accidentally discovered that that's available by long pressing the reload button.)
  - benjaminjackman 9y ago
    Long pressing the reload button ... wow ... yep it does that. I wonder: Is there some site that just lists all the different tricks for mobile safari in a list? I feel like I am 8 again bombing random walls / burning random trees in Zelda looking for a super secret fabled (atleast in my grade school) green potion of unlimited refills when I'm using iOS safari half the time. Also, I feel like double tapping the address bar used to scroll to the top of the page too but it seems like it doesn't do that anymore so showing what was ninja patched out would be useful too.
    - saagarjha 9y ago
      On iOS, tapping the middle of the status bar will scroll up to the top.
  - spost 9y ago
    You can also find in page by typing into the URL bar and picking Find "<search text>" at the bottom of the suggestion list.
GlennS 9y ago
For me, there's a viscious circle at work here. I don't use my phone that much because the usability is rubbish, and when I do I find it an exercise in frustration. So, when someone asks me to make a website usable on mobile, I really have no idea what usably on mobile would actually involve. And the result is I make a single column of content which is 100% of screen width and has all the buttons and text inputs enlarged. I've tried looking for advice about this on the web, but because mobile is such a hype-driven area, the search engine results for any mobile web design topic are inevitably marketing idiocy. So, where can I read something by people who've done real usability experiments on touchscreens?

arkh 9y ago

> * Easier to tap anywhere than to click anywhere with a mouse. > * 360° scrolling with high accuracy and intuitive control over the velocity. > * Zooming with quick and intuitive gestures. I disagree about those. "taping" lack a lot of precision a mouse has. And don't get me started on the typing experience as you can't use all your fingers and have no tactile return. Also Ctrl-F "the thing I'm looking for" anyone ? The intuitive gestures are all but intuitive if you have never used them before. My first reflex to zoom is sure not to move diagonally 2 fingers on a picture.

cyphar 9y ago
> Also Ctrl-F "the thing I'm looking for" anyone? I always forget that mobile browsers say "find in page" rather than "search" when you're trying to search for something on the page, so my eyes skim past it all the time in the hamburger menu.
fiddlerwoaroof 9y ago
On iOS you can put find in page in the bottom row of the screen that pops up when you hit the share button. I also put request desktop site there for easy access (although I recently accidentally discovered that that's available by long pressing the reload button.)
- benjaminjackman 9y ago
  Long pressing the reload button ... wow ... yep it does that. I wonder: Is there some site that just lists all the different tricks for mobile safari in a list? I feel like I am 8 again bombing random walls / burning random trees in Zelda looking for a super secret fabled (atleast in my grade school) green potion of unlimited refills when I'm using iOS safari half the time. Also, I feel like double tapping the address bar used to scroll to the top of the page too but it seems like it doesn't do that anymore so showing what was ninja patched out would be useful too.
  - saagarjha 9y ago
    On iOS, tapping the middle of the status bar will scroll up to the top.
- spost 9y ago
  You can also find in page by typing into the URL bar and picking Find "<search text>" at the bottom of the suggestion list.

GlennS 9y ago

For me, there's a viscious circle at work here. I don't use my phone that much because the usability is rubbish, and when I do I find it an exercise in frustration. So, when someone asks me to make a website usable on mobile, I really have no idea what usably on mobile would actually involve. And the result is I make a single column of content which is 100% of screen width and has all the buttons and text inputs enlarged. I've tried looking for advice about this on the web, but because mobile is such a hype-driven area, the search engine results for any mobile web design topic are inevitably marketing idiocy. So, where can I read something by people who've done real usability experiments on touchscreens?