Mobile ready?

[okrobie]

How do I make my site mobile ready?

[gwpriester]

There are two ways. Since Xara web design is WYSIWYG and not rescalable, you cannot just design a website and have one size fit all.

So, you can design a site that is smaller, that more or less splits the size difference with larger text and buttons, or you can design a full size website, and then design a mobile site.

I find that most mobile sites have way too much content. You cannot have the same amount of photos and other graphics on a small mobile site. Well, I guess you can, you just won't get many people visiting your site for long. Even the fastest mobile connection is slow compared to broadband internet. And you can't count on your visitors using WiFi to browse though many do.

[okrobie]

Hi gwpriester, thanks for your detailed explanation. I know of a site that was built in Xara and it displays well in both desktop and mobile. I will give you the url and see if you can figure out how it was achieved. http://guns4jax.com Thanks for your help, okrobie

P.S. Most of the time this week I will be on my mobile so don't be surprised if I'm not verbose in my replys.

[gwpriester]

No way you would be able to use that site in a smart phone. And this is exactly what I was talking about having way too much content.

You can open any website in a mobile device but that does not mean you will be able to navigate, or get to the content.

But I would not try to stop you from designing such a busy mobile site if this is what you want.

It is just not how I would design for a small device.

[Miko]

And in the bottom left hand corner it says this "This page looks best with Internet Explorer at 1024 By 768 pixels or better."

[okrobie]

This very forum displays on my phone and I'm using it right now. My phone allows me to expand it so it is usable. By the same principle I can use the gun site. The problem I am having is on this site: http://doublereedoutdoors.com/preliminary/ it displays on my phone as too big and I have to scroll too much to see it all. I want to display the whole page on my phone.

[Miko]

That site is not mobile friendly which is why you have to scroll.

[PeteS]

The term 'mobile ready' or 'mobile friendly' is so often over used and more often than that misunderstood.

I'll explain the differences between the 2 sites you're looking at. Yes, both of these sites are created in a Xara program, but of different versions...

http://guns4jax.com/ - This is site was exported from version 7
http://doublereedoutdoors.com/preliminary/ - This site was exported from version 9

The only difference as far as being 'mobile friendly' goes is that since version 8 (after a large amount of user requests) the following line of code was added to exported web pages by default:

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0"/>

That is what makes the page look like it's "zoomed in". What this is actually doing is specifying to the handheld device how to display the page on load and telling it to display it pixel for pixel (so if your web page is 800px wide then it will display at 800px wide, so if your screen is only 300px wide then it means that you'll see the first 300px of the page from the left). This is called the viewport and not zoom.

Previous versions did not have this line of code included in the exported page, so it meant that the device which was loading the site decided how to load the page.

The site http://doublereedoutdoors.com/preliminary/ is 'mobile friendly' because it loads to a readable size on load rather than having to pinch to read the content.

If you want to make http://doublereedoutdoors.com/preliminary/ display the same as http://guns4jax.com/ and not include the line of code then you can do that within Xara so it doesn't export that line of code.

Select any object within your website document (a logo or something that is not likely to be deleted). Right click on it and select 'Names...' and in the dialog box type NoViewportMeta and click Add. Then re-publish your website and your site will display the same on a handheld device as http://guns4jax.com/ initially on load.

[okrobie]

Thanks PeteS, I appreciate your reply. You were kind enough to give me, not only a quick fix but also the history and background of the subject. Now I can give my client a choice. He will be the best one to judge the quality of his site. Thanks again, Jim