MetaMobile

April 20, 2009 4:36 PM

Whatever you're doing with Metafilter's mobile access, keep it up.

I used to have issues when trying to read Metafilter through my mobile phone. The straight-up www.metafilter.com took ages to load, and would not let me post. Both of these issues have now been taken care of, as I posted this comment via mobile phone.

Having said that, there are still some issues with mobile.metafilter.com. I'm not able to post, which isn't that much of an issue for those who just want to read the site. However, when clicking one of the header links - Metafilter, Ask Metafilter, Metatalk, etc. - all it seems to do is refresh the front page, which has the top eight links of each of those pages. Click into one of these threads, and trying to click "Back" merely refreshes the thread.

I don't know how helpful this information would be, but I just thought I'd let you know that the URL intended for the mobile phone seems to be buggier than the plain ol' URL.

posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing to MetaFilter-Related at 4:36 PM (22 comments total)

... and don't forget to fuck right off.
posted by dersins at 5:00 PM on April 20, 2009 [1 favorite]

mobile.metafilter.com was specifically set up for iPhones, and behavior on other devices will vary wildly. But really the site was just an experiment, and we don't plan on supporting or maintaining mobile.metafilter going forward. We'll leave it turned on for now, but that's about it.

We've found that the standard site works well on iPhones, and we're tweaking the main site for iPhones instead of building a separate space for it.
posted by pb (staff) at 5:11 PM on April 20, 2009

pb, are you interested in feedback from G1 users?
posted by boo_radley at 5:13 PM on April 20, 2009

boo_radley, for the main site, sure, but we won't be tweaking mobile.metafilter in any way.
posted by pb (staff) at 5:14 PM on April 20, 2009

We've found that the standard site works fairly well on iPhones, and we're tweaking the main site for the iPhone instead of building a separate space for it.

Well that's pretty neat. Not that I'd ever buy an iPhone, but I'm happy that whatever tweaking the main site for iPhones is doing seems to so far translate well into what a relatively new Sony Ericsson is capable of handling.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 5:16 PM on April 20, 2009

... and don't forget to fuck right off.

Oh shit this was totally the wrong thread. Sorry.
posted by dersins at 5:21 PM on April 20, 2009 [7 favorites]

Unprovoked hostility really didn't seem out of character.
posted by gman at 5:27 PM on April 20, 2009

Metafilter is all fucked up on my DynaTAC 8000X.
posted by gman at 5:30 PM on April 20, 2009 [3 favorites]

Unprovoked hostility really didn't seem out of character.

*hangs head in shame*
posted by dersins at 5:39 PM on April 20, 2009

gman, what is that? A microwave? Jesus.
posted by boo_radley at 6:11 PM on April 20, 2009 [1 favorite]

... and don't forget to fuck right off.

Oh shit this was totally the wrong thread. Sorry.

OOh, what thread was it supposed to be for, and can we follow you in there?
posted by abc123xyzinfinity at 7:24 PM on April 20, 2009

gman, what is that? A microwave?

If you put it in some kind of box and turn the volume all the way up? Probably.
posted by Rock Steady at 8:19 PM on April 20, 2009

Haven't any of you ever seen a garage opener before?
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:44 PM on April 20, 2009

The earliest garage door opener I could find. A later model, much miniaturized, from the late 60s.
posted by boo_radley at 9:45 PM on April 20, 2009 [1 favorite]

Metafilter: ... and don't forget to fuck right off.
posted by Artw at 10:09 PM on April 20, 2009

young dolph lundgren.
posted by Hat Maui at 11:23 PM on April 20, 2009

Try LoFi. You won't have to wade through the entire sidebar just to see the latest post.
posted by caddis at 4:16 AM on April 21, 2009 [2 favorites]

. . . we don't plan on supporting or maintaining mobile.metafilter going forward. We'll leave it turned on for now, but that's about it.

Hmm, that's kind of disappointing. I guess it will depend on the results of the tweaking, but right now I find the mobile site far more usable on my iphone (for reading) than the standard site is. Far too much zooming & side scrolling required for the latter. If mobile displayed more than 8 posts at a time I'd be blissful.
posted by sevenyearlurk at 6:21 AM on April 21, 2009

On my Blackberry, I use Opera Mini and just go to the regular, non-mobile, site. It seems to work pretty well (at the very least, I haven't had any problems with navigation or stuff not showing up, which is more than I can say for a lot of other sites out there.)
posted by quin at 7:20 AM on April 21, 2009

Personally I've found that the lofi version works significantly better than the mobile one on my Symbian S60 phone. (I gave up on the 'mobile' one pretty quickly after I realized it was aimed at iPhones and not really at mobile platforms generally.)

Other people with non-iPhone mobile devices might want to give the lofi homepage a shot if they're finding the main page too slow to load or too wide to easily browse (those are the two issues I have with it).
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:59 AM on April 21, 2009

Ditto the lofi love. It works far more quickly and efficiently on my WinMobile smartphone than metafilter.com. I also wish it were available for MeTa and AskMe -- the mobile.metafilter url is nice, but lacks functionality.
posted by zarq at 11:53 AM on April 21, 2009

This is probably an idiotic question, but if mobile.metafilter.com is aimed only at iphones, why not call it ip.metafilter.com? Mobile implies more than one phone.
posted by QIbHom at 12:01 PM on April 23, 2009