It would be nice if I could use this site from a Windows Mobile device.  It's not formatted for a mobile device (does not automatically load a different CSS file or anything).

That wouldn't be so bad if the "Reply" function would work though.  Pressing Reply on any of these threads just brings me to the home page! 

I've had great results using this site on my WM 6.1 phone. I'm not sure about the CSS issue, but replying and using the other site features works exactly as in a desktop browser. We will keep looking into the issue, though, because we definitely want the site to be mobile friendly. Thanks for the feedback.

I can reproduce the issue where the Reply button in any thread goes to the home page on two devices:  HTC Artemis and HTC Kaiser.  Both are running Windows Mobile 6 Professional.

When I use Windows Mobile 6 Standard, the Reply button does work and brings me to the proper reply page with input fields.

I do not use Windows Mobile 6.1 Pro or Standard anymore since the builds I've tried were way too buggy, and no Windows Mobile 6.1 devices have been officially released yet.

The CSS issue is where normally web developers would create a separate CSS file that formats the site for better use on a mobile device when a mobile device browser is detected. It's similar to what you've already done on this site by creating separate CSS files for when a Print command is detected.

Wow, thanks for the thorough testing, Adamz. Much appreciated! We'll pass all this along to our Web developers.

As a side note, I am baffled by the fact that Professional and Standard work so differently at times. Of course, the differences may be in the IE Mobile version, rather than the OS itself. We've definitely seen some inconsistent behavior from the IE Mobile versions we have installed on our various phones in the office. 

I agree - I see a lot of difference between rendering in desktop browsers compared to IE on the mobile. The first one I managed to figure out was the option under Menu -> View -> One Column. With this selected, tables and all sorts of things break horribly on a lot of sites. Switching to "Fit to Screen" will usually resolve the issue.

 I always change my view to "Desktop" on non-mobile enabled sites,  yes it requires you to scroll accross, but it gives the highest fidelity.

For this forum I use - High Resolution with the largest font, which on My Qtek 9000 gives me a full screen of forum comments...yes would be nice to Reply...and post on the fly.....

We've figured out that posting and replying seem to work differently depending on IE Mobile and WM versions installed on the device. Some people are not having a problem, while others are. We have a request into the Windows Mobile technical support people to see if they can provide a solution so that everyone can post and reply while mobile. Stay tuned... And thanks for the feedback!

I'm using IE 6.1 on a HTC Polaris and I've set the View level to 'Fit to Screen', this renders the page perfectly for me.

My only outstanding issue is the Reply button which I have seen has already been raised with the Web Developers.

Bill and Andrea, my hat goes off to you two. I absolutely love this site. 

Biomehanika:

Bill, my hat goes off to you. I absolutely live this site.

 

I'm so glad that you like this site - both Bill and Andrea have done such a great job with it.

I am so excited to be a part of it.

Yeah, that would be great. I would certainly be using the site it on my mobile if this was to be implemented.

It's interesting to know that WM Pro IE behaves differently than WM Standard. Makes me wonder why though.

Hi Ahmed.

I realised last night that although the Quick Reply link would not work from a mobile device, the Reply option in the header of each post does work.

The Quick reply uses a pop-up which IE 6.1 does not support, but the Reply option takes you through to a complete page for entering a response. And it works perfectly.

Hi, everyone. We've been working with the MS Mobility Expert Center (in Prague!), and have some updates for you about mobile-optimization on this site. There were two issues we logged:

• No mobile-friendly CSS being used on the site
• Functional buttons (i.e. Reply) and input areas working differently (or not at all) on WM Pro and Standard devices.

 Here's what we found out:

• We learned from testing that IE Mobile is having to load around 400K per page, which is far too much for mobile delivery! We also found that the layout of the forum posts is difficult to use on a mobile device. This summer, we will be workingon implementing mobile-optimized CSS throughout this site (if budget allows!). This is very high on our list of priorities.
• We also learned from our testing that buttons and input features are not coded to work with stylus or touchscreen devices - which would explain why the Reply buttonand reply feature doesn't work correctly on a WM Pro device.

Thanks to all of you for helping us identify and troubleshoot these issues - and thanks, too, for your patience as we continue improving this site! Keep the feedback coming, and we'll keep fixing stuff...

B

 

Thanks Bill!  Keep us updated?

 Or, should we just skip the mobile-site and make a Windows Mobile Forum Thread application like my suggestion here?  :)

Totally agree - I'd love to see a mobile forum client! Perhaps Chris Craft ("30 Days of .NET Windows Mobile Applications") can help?