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Hey, does this iPhone blog addon work?

I have an addon for the blog website, I’m using it at the suggestion of a reader for a few weeks now.

Apparently, people have these smartphone thingies these days they can use to surf the web.

That’s pretty cool. Why, I was just using my luggable computer the other day (the one with the orange plasma screen) and thinking that portable computing is really neat.

Anyway, I installed an addon here that is supposed to let folks using iPhones, Blackberrys, Droids and similar devices choose a view of the blog that is easier to read or navigate.

Of course, I don’t have any of those devices, nor does anyone I know, so I have no idea if it works, how it works, any of it.

It’s magic!

If you have one of those devices, could you please do me a favor, check the blog website out, and drop me a comment letting me know if things are okay? I’d hate to have it just be broken and not know about it.

Thanks!

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31 thoughts on “Hey, does this iPhone blog addon work?”

  1. Confirmed here on iPhone. Shows each article as separate links and a nifty drop down at the top for email and rss.

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  3. I checked on my LG Xenon and your site came up quickly and clearly. The only problem I have (which is entirely my problem cuz I suck at touchscreens) is that the article shows as just as too wide for my screen and shifting the screen left and right is awkward for me.

    Congrats on joining the mobile webverse!

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  4. If I read blogs on my (touchscreen but non-smart) phone, I do it via Snaptu, which has a built-in RSS reader that formats articles nicely for a small screen. The only thing it doesn’t do is let you comment on articles – for that you need to use the phone’s browser, which is a bit cumbersome.
    .-= Andy´s last blog ..My Dongle-ong =-.

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  7. @Chaninn – I have the same problem with a lot of blogs on my phone (a Samsung Tocco Lite btw), including my own. I think the problem is that the phone’s browser makes the page at least as wide as the header image, stretching the post content container to that width in the process.
    .-= Andy´s last blog ..My Dongle-ong =-.

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  11. I don’t surf the web much on my phone, but I thought I’d check out your post on my Android-based phone as you requested.

    For me, the switch to a “phone-friendly” view was automatic and not a choice that I had to make. It looks pretty sharp. On your main page (which is mostly graphics-free), the title has a down-arrow on the right which allows the user to select Menu (Home, Rss Feed, Email), Tags (empty) or Categories (Uncategorized, General, Druiding, etc.). Each post listing on the main page has a calendar icon on the left which shows the date of the post, as well as a red circle containing the number of comments on that post. The rest of the individual post listing is the title, author and categories for the post. Each post listing on the main page also has an arrow on the right which just brings up a target/highlight area that doesn’t appear to be associated with anything, and clicking on the highlight area doesn’t do anything.

    Clicking on the post title on the main page brings up the individual post which, while also graphics-free, looks pretty similar to the regular “big-computer” page. There are icons at the bottom of the post which allow you to navigate to the next or previous post, email, Twitter, and an icon that brings up a list of social media targets, including Del.icio.us, Digg, Technorati, Magnolia, Newsvine and Reddit. Next there’s a link to bring up the comments (which has grown from 1 to 8 while I’ve been typing this) and lastly the text boxes to enter one’s own comment. There’s a CommentLuv icon/link in there, too.

    Oh, hey, here at the bottom of the page is the place to turn off the Mobile Theme, which was on by default. Imagine that.

    Sorry about the lengthy and detailed nature of my comment. I suppose it reflects my past experience writing requirements documents and user manuals. Ick.

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  12. Yep, works a treat – a much more touchscreen friendly layout.

    Typing this on the desktop though – a real keyboard leaves the iPhone’s soft keyboard for dead, no matter how nice the site itself looks 🙂

    @Chaninn: it may just be that the addon doesn’t quite recognise the user-agent string for your phone and is formatting the page incorrectly. (or else it just has the one setting and relies on the phone to figure it out from there, in which case it may still be a browser issue). Probably not a lot you can do about it.

    @Andy: agreed that’s often a problem reading things on mobile browsers, but the addon BBB installed actually strips out the header images. The site actually looks completely different on my phone now (unless I toggle back to the normal view in the page footer).

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  16. Works in the default browser on my blackberry if I turn on javascript. I doubt most people have javascript enabled on BlackBerry, especially storm(I keep it offf myself)
    When using opera mini on a blackberry it works great

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  20. If you dont see the comments they are probably hidden behind a link (gonna suppose an I-frame type of thing) that you need to cpick to show them, they expand once that link is clicked. Droid does work well with thıs as stated above by the other commenter. Now if I couldonpy get a real dictionary on the phone it may decide to give me the right spelling options.

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  21. @ Andy and Nimizar: Thanks for confirming that it may not be my own incompetence, lol.
    I’m gonna check out the Snaptu that Andy was talking about, maybe that will help.

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  25. Works great on Nokia 5800 as well. I was using the Opera Mini browser but I’m sure it would work fine with the default one as well.
    Keep up the good work.

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  29. Hi BBB. I was just wondering if you had removed the iPhone blog converter doohickey because it doesn’t seem to be working anymore. FYI I tested it when you first posted about it so I know what it should look like, but I’m not seeing it anymore. Anyway it was sort of implied that you’d like to know if it was broken, so I thought I would ask. 🙂

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  30. Yes, I removed it when the website was hacked, when we were still trying to resolve what the vector of appraoch was that allowed the hackers in. I should be able to restore it now.

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