Greetings,

Due to a few requests, I've added a mobile theme to Gimp Chat and need a few members with smart phones to test it out and provide some feedback. It's basically a scaled down interface, with no bells and whistles, but does provide the basic functionality of the forums, while being more suited to smart phone's small screen sizes and limited bandwidth. I don't have a smart phone, only an el cheapo cell will a limited min-browser, so I can't really test.

Being this site is very graphics intensive, it's not well suited for a smart phone, unless you have plenty of bandwidth and no caps on data. This brings up the issue of how to handle large images. The mobile theme currently just scales the image to fit the screen size. I guess that is as good of an approach as any. Otherwise, I'd be into creating physical thumbnails of all embedded images and providing those smaller images to the mobile user. That might be efficient for the mobile device user but would mean lots of overhead on the server side so it's not an option, at this point.

Switching to the mobile theme is currently a manual process. You can select between GimpChat and phpBBmobile in your User Control Panel (UCP) under Board Preferences/Board Style (At this point, you don't even need a mobile phone to preview the theme).

If it's determined having a mobile theme is useful, I have a bit of code that can supposedly detect whether or not you're using a mobile device and will automatically switch to the mobile theme. That will need to be tested as well.

So, please check it out when you get a chance and let me know what you think. I'm open to all suggestions and recommendations..

Thanks!!

First impression, didn't play with it too long. It works fine on a Samsung Galaxy using Opera. I checked out a few pics they scale nicely. Zooming in is good enough for pics. Navigation is OK too.

It will be fine for anyone who just wants to keep up with what's going on.

The mobile theme won't be useful unless there is an automatic switch. Otherwise we will need one id for the regular browser and one for the smartphone.

Looks fine on my nexus. But I would not be browsing gimpchat from my phone.

Is it possible for it to be an "app" so both versions are available without going in and changing the settings?

2-Ton, there is a universal app that supports forums called tapatalk I believe. I never actually got it but would be interested.

The mobile theme looks fantastic on my iPhone Tux.

I had no problem using the same log in info for both.

Until there is a theme auto-switch you id is associated with either the mobile or the fullsize theme, which won't be too usable for the other navigator if you access GC with both while keeping the same id.

Tapatalk is not free, and I only use free apps! I see a few free ones in the apple store, so will check them out.

Well, when I go to GC, I get the full version on my phone right now...so will try out the mobile now.

I guess it's ok, but I prefer the full version. I like to see where there are new posts that I haven't read yet. I know it's small and graphic intensive, but I just make it bigger and scroll around, lol. If I was in an area of low reception, then I think the mobile version would be an advantage.