Mobile Phone Website

[UKExhibition]

Hello
Can somebody tell me how to gain a correct mini-website version of my website on a smart phone - I assume like everything it is very easy however; any simple steps would be perfect

[I-CC]

Afraid no simple steps as this would have to be a completely separate site targeted at the mobile phone framework.

[Steve G Griggs]

I'm sure there has been a small discussion on this recently, it's a whole can of worms what with form filling and checkouts on mobile phones, an Actinic site is OK on iPad (if a little fiddly) but something like an Android phone would raise all sorts of user experience/usability issues I think.
Lots of issues at work here.

[Mike Hughes]

I would imagine (haven't done it so I'm sure I'm oversimplifying) that displaying a cut down site on mobiles is fairly straightforward. As long as you're using a css based design you should be able to use an alternative stylesheet that hides all the unwanted bits and puts the remaining bits on the screen where you want them.

The real problems as I see them is that you really need a completely different site structure, navigation and content in order for it to work properly and be usable.

I'm sure as the market becomes stronger and good ways to address the issues start to evolve that Actinic will sort out the problems. At the moment though it's still a whole can of worms and I suspect a little way off before we see a solution.

Mike

[Steve G Griggs]

Just hiding content is not a good way to approach mobile design due to bandwidth considerations. One sure way to create unhappy visitors to a website is to have them download data to their phone (and pay to do it) that they never see.
There is also the sizes of images to consider, do you really want tiny little images to suit the mobile visitors displayed on a desktop site, or do you want the mobile visitors to download big images that get squashed up small by your css.
Data costs and download times are of prime concern with mobile optimised websites.
Another area is checkout functionality and filling in forms using a mobile.
You also have to consider navigation buttons and links, try following links on some desktop sites even on an iPad and you'll soon see that the clickable area is often too small for comfort.
It is I'm afraid a very big can of worms.
Mobile device detection is also a big issue too if you either use separate CSS stylesheets, or have a separate mobile site. Separate CSS stylesheets need care too to prevent un-necessary data downloading.
Likewise you can't rely 100% on media queries in CSS just yet.
Also have a look sometime at how many smart phones tablets and other devices are out there, and how the support for CSS/HTML/javascript etc varies, as well as different screen sizes and pixel densities....

[fergusw]

Responsive CSS/Javascript design is the most flexible way to deal with the multiplicity of devices and screen sizes now available. Designing in this way means create a flexible design that varies according to the width of pixels of the containing window on the device being used to view the site.
It does mean compromises when designing i.e. selecting what element of a page take precedence when switching to a 1 column layout on small devices, however if the site design is well thought out the end result can be very effective.
It's not a magic bullet and there are no 100% guaranteed methods to ensure your site performs "correctly" or "accurately" across all platforms.
One of the earlier examples of this is the Boston Globe website.
We've been experimenting for some time within Actinic to create just such a design format for ecommerce. There are several challenges, especially the checkout, that we found, and as yet we do not have a definitive responsive design that we are 100% happy with.

[marknc]

I have a mobile site and have received orders from it. It is tricky though and you need to be able to build 2 completely different sites. Ours is a subdomain of the main site and uses screen resolution detection to bounce visitors over to it, but a server-side user-agent routine would probably be more efficient.

Keeping it updated is also an issue without actually doing the same work twice. I use the hierarchical import to update the products only without affecting the design of the mobile site. However, I am fairly new to this and have not yet refined the operation.

It is not in Actinics' interest to provide a solution to those who purchase the desktop software as they are champing their Actinic Online solution which provides just this functionality when you host with them.

I'm sure they will roll it out with a desktop upgrade at some point but not yet I think.