Practically every single course on proper web design teaches that dark text on a white background is the most aesthetically pleasing.

Thank you for throwing that drivel out the window, the screenshot looked great!

I haven't tried browsing the new design with the 770. I hope it works. I also thought that using a dark theme would give less pixel strain to the 770.

Thanks all.

Looks nice!

Very nice screenshot! I like it!

Hi, Reggie,

Although unsuccessful for the past year, I'll take the bait and plug my pet peeve once more : us ITT users who actually use the 770 to access it, at least part of the time :-)

I've always had two issues with ITT-as-a-mobile-user's site : one, the pretty page header takes a lot of vertical space, which means that on a screen like the 770's it's almost all you can see, and on every new page you need to scroll down first to see any actual content. Second, the vBulletin is HTML, graphics and javascript-heavy, which makes the tablet very slow to render the pages in Opera. Perusing the forums, in particular, with the constant back-and-forth between TOCs and threads, is a real pain.

True, when I first remarked on this, you were kind enough to add a "mobile" skin. But although it is very much faster, it is also so crippled functionally that it's not really more usable than the classic one on the tablet, and has not been upgraded since.

So as you're working on a visual upgrade, I'd like to put in my plea that you also make it a usability improvement for access by 770 users, which seems only natural. This could be either by making the main interface leaner and lighter so that it fits well in the tablet (like the oesf.org forums for instance), or by keeping the shiny-and-heavy main style but adding a feature-complete "mobile" skin that allows a reasonable use of the forums...

TIA,
fp

I will try my best to add a mobile version of the forums. I'm not sure though if I'll be able to find one for the main page.

As for the forums, the the fully functional mobile version will look like: http://www.gtplanet.net/forum/index.php?styleid=12

Thanks.

Thanks for looking into it. As far as I'm concerned, a mobile skin for the forums only would do just fine.

I looked at the gtplanet link you posted. It seems a bit more functional than the current PDA skin on ITT, but unless I'm missing something I believe it still suffers from the same major drawbacks, mostly :

- a totally broken "search results" display, which can be seen on "today's posts" (and I suppose on the equivalent "new posts", when logged in). These are probably the most useful functions for a regular/frequent reader of a forum, but here the post titles are wrapped at about 15 chars wide, which is ridiculous on a screen like the 770's.

- a broken topics list display (in search or regular modes) : there is no link to the first unread post for each thread, which is a total pain. No indication of number of posts, or links to pages...

- a broken thread display : no width reformatting (!), huge page lengths, and not even a timestamps for each post...

I've mentioned this reference before, but compare this with the mobile version of this other vBulletin site, http://www.pdafrance.com/pdaforum/?styleid=12 :

- forum lists have a colored pictogram to indicate those with new posts in them,

- topic lists have a pictogram to indicate those with new posts in them, that also acts as a link to the first unread one. There are also page lists/links and the timestamp/name of last post.

- thread display has a skin-specific formatting and pagination, retaining basic post information like timestamps etc.

This is done with a very few tiny gifs, is just as lightweight and fast as plain text, and very pleasant and effective to use. For those who may have problems accessing the site (or with French :-), I am attaching small screenshots of the three examples cited above.

Thanks,
fp

Nghia, the main guy who runs PDA France is a good friend and he did share me his (french) mobile template that we used in 1SRC.com for a while. The problem with it is it is so customized that it became a problem with updating the forum software. Believe it or not, PDA France is using v2.3 of vBulletin when the current version is already v3.6. One of the reasons they can't upgrade is the difficulty of converting the hacks to the latest version.

Really ? That's fun ! I keep forgetting how small a place the world has become :-)
Sorry for belabouring a point you already knew of, though.
Well, I understand than staying so far behind obviously causes problem for an administrator (eg security and support issues)... but as a user, I find the PDAFrance forums work real well for me as they are. I don't know if I'm missing out on killer improvements by not using the latest version, but as they say, if it ain't broke... I'd rather keep the old one with a good "mobile skin" than "upgrade" to newest with a bad one :-)

As an aside, I wonder what software oesf uses for the Zaurus forums ? I've never felt the need for a mobile skin on that one, it works fine as it is on a Zaurus or 770 :
http://www.oesf.org/forums/