Topic: Is there a mobile friendly way to view the forums? (Read 728 times)

Upgrading to the newest SMF version might not be that easy if many changes were introduced by theymos to SMF currently used by bitcointalk over the years. It's also likely that upgrading would increase the attack surface, bitcointalk hasn't been hacked for several years now, newer SMF versions are unlikely to be as tried and tested as bitcointalk's with how big of a target it is.

Since the thread was bumped...

If you use the Firefox browser on your phone, you can download the Tampermonkey extension and use this script to make it more mobile-friendly: Bitcointalk Mobile Friendly App for Android

One of the reasons could be because the New Forum software has been under development for quite sometime now.
Perhaps admin saw no point of creating a forum app yet there is a new forum software about to be introduced. Maybe ideas of the forum apps would be welcome once migration to Epochtalk is complete.

The first thing, when I registered on the forum was searching through the App Store for Bitcointalk app. But unfortunately there is no such app. I use mostly smartphone while surfing the net, but here it’ quite uncomfortable.

Crypto world is very progressive, so it’s strange that this forum has no app.

That is exactly what being open source means. That it is 100% safe. If it wasn't people would be able to test the codebase and find out vulnerabilities.
With that said, I tried that app, the signatures didn't appear okay on my device... maybe because I used a phablet.
does anyone know if the new software is mobile friendly?

Migrating the actual information from one system to another should not be that much of an issue, especially since both the current forum and the future-to-be Epochtalk based forum have SQL type databases. Setting-up the same base collation page, and checking the size, datatype, and referential integrity are an essential part of the procedure.  The tougher data elements to tackle are likely functionality related fields and values, which need to be guaranteed to exists and interpreted in the same manner on the migrated software (or plan their mapping to different values if required).

Functionality (not data) is the hard-core keystone here, where I figure the specks of Epochtalk have been specified in order to allow the creation of an abstract layer of functionality necessary to implement n-different variant configurations of a forum instance (i.e. Epochtalk could implement Bitcointalk, but many more forums with a common backbone, but different parametrizable/add-on modules/features). On top of that, Epochtalk should guarantee being a functional supraset of Bitcointalk. If Bitcointalk were to constantly evolve, these innovations should form part of Epochtalk specifications (core or modules), thus slowing even more the software development cycle.

That does not mean that Bitcointalk SMF based functionality could/should not evolve, but it is likely deliberately set on hold (except for quick-wins) in order to not slowdown Epochtalk refinement even more.

Why does that matter to you? That’s what the admin said. Your opinion is yours alone. He’s not going to ditch the software he paid for just because some user prefers SMF; and I don’t have to convince you about anything.

When theymos opened a beta mirror of the forum software a few years ago, he migrated the data (from that time) from this forum to the beta mirror/branch. Sounds doable for me.

"Many things would break"? Really? What exactly?

If you guys put as much effort into keeping up this forum as you've put into converting to a new system, things wouldn't break.

Also, converting data between systems is not easy.

This must be the easiest part. The new forum software development has been completed and we are at the bug-hunting part of it. Migrating data from this forum to a new software made for us isn't hard. The devs must have done it in a way that makes it almost fully compatible.

We are not going to upgrade this forum to a new SMF version (many things would break), so we must wait for the new software. That has been said multiple times already.

Yeah, and then you have to develop a system to pull in all the data from this forum, which will likely take a long time as well. Clearly this whole "new forum software" idea wasn't very well thought-out.

Yup, Lovely indeed 
But i am trying to be realistic.

The decision to make a new forum software was made years old... Admittedly it has been a painfully slow process but your suggestion does not stand a chance right now especially since a lot of money was pumped into it.
It only now requires testing for bug.

Such a lovely person aren't you?

Why are you so against upgrading to a new version that will provide the very options someone is asking about? Even if you still decide to switch to different software in the future at least people get the options they want now rather than years down the line.

Then create your own forum and upgrade it to whatever options you were suggesting.
It's quite simple, isn't it?

You can make this forum responsive quite easily...

Option A:
Upgrade to SMF 2.0.15 and install the Responsive Curve theme

Option B:
Upgrade to SMF 2.1 RC2, which is responsive out of the box

Instead it seems the powers that be would like to do things the hard way by developing unnecessary new forum software and forcing people to wait on that instead.

Mobiles are always not friendly-use when surfing forums or looking to read from articles; you will always have to use the zoom option then start scrolling right and left 
Tablettes are better effecient if you can't use your computer.

Fortunetly, the new from software is good responsive for different platforms.
May be i can guess that most users will always like to surf the forum in a classic way (spending hours behind my desktop computer)

I've done it one time and really hard time posting and if I keep it up for months I will be needing new eyeglasses, so I just use my pc when navigating and posting here in Bitcointalk, mobile is only good for social media updates.

Heaps of consideration for those people who have circumspection related its activities that uses an internet.

Actually this problem has been solved because there is people who have an innovation to make easy for each member that come to this forum,

However this is too risky to ensure the truth, when an innovation came and the moderator of this forum didn't gave any response to it then my mind think it's not worth to use it. I guess they were looking for a way to overcome this problem, it could be they choose the application with several note or they have prepared a new application to overcome this problem.

You have to look this thread https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/what-is-wrong-with-the-development-of-new-software-5108349

This is very old problem. And it looks that it won't be solved soon - we have to wait until new forum software will be released.
And unfortunately there are not much alternatives ways how to make forum mobile friendly. I spend most of time on forum using smartphone and I already got used to zoom-in or zoom-out when needed. Using unofficial apps isn't solution because it's not confirmed to be 100% secure to use.
Bitcointalk have WAP version. You can view it by adding /;wap to the end of URL. For example:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5094794.0/;wap
But it looks terrible, and basically it's just very basic read-only thing.
If I'm not mistaken there was also WML version, but I don't know why I can't access it. But it's pretty much same thing as WAP version.

There are mobile users like us too, and viewing it on cellphones is a major eyesore.

The team really has to roll out the new update soon.

As long as such applications are not officially issued by the forum admins/developers, their use involves a risk.
Being open source does not mean that it is 100%.
There are some browsers like Opera, Puffin, and UC that give nice and good interfaces when browsing this forum but using PC to browse this site give you better results.

There's a topic that claims to be mobile friendly: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/bitcointalk-mobile-friendly-app-for-android-4500633

Maybe I'm dumb but I keep having to zoom in and scroll while viewing on mobile.  What am I missing?