A touching way to view Boards.ie

Dav

Sorry I have a cheesy pun quota to fill...

After what's been a lot of hard work from Ross and some of the other Distilled Media tech people, we're delighted to announce that we have a new touch screen friendly version of Boards available at touch.boards.ie. This is intended as a major revamp for mobile browsing and should be considerably more friendly to use than m.boards.ie (which is still available). It works great on phones and tablets alike (I'm using it on a HTC Android device myself). It supports images, embedded YouTube clips and spoiler tags too, so it's a much more complete browsing experience.

So give it a look and let us know what you think. If you find any issues, please let us know and we'll do our best to address them.

Thank you all.

5starpool

Looks good. I think I'll still use the full site to browse from my phone anyhow, but I like the way the subscribed forums and then all the rest are listed when you hit the forums button/tab.

Saying that though, I just went into reply to a thread to see the interface, then without entering a post, touched the thread link to go back to the thread and got an error:

Failed to decode JSON: Snytax error.

Edit: Tried the above again and no error, but definitely got it last time. When you click the thread title from the forum, it brings you to the last page, as it should, but from within the reply page, if you click the thread title under the "Post reply in" heading, it brings you back to the first page of the thread. Should this not bring you to the last page?

pickarooney

The normal site works just fine on my tablet so I won't have any use for this.

LoLth

tested on Samsung Galaxy S and it worked nicely much more navigable than the old m. site (and thats not because I haz pudgy fingers!)

alwaysadub

Maybe I'm just blind, but I can't find the User CP anywhere? I saw it yesterday..
Also if there was a reply button at the bottom of the page too it'd help, save having to scroll back up. Definitely a huge improvement on m.boards though!

WindSock

Just trying it out now, typing this post. Looks handy so far, browsing mit mein handi.

alwaysadub

Just noticed there doesn't seem to be an edit button?

stovelid

Thanks guys!

Viewing on a Desire HD. Haven't had a chance to play around fully but looks good.

bazkennedy

My one issue is the forums tab- maybe break it down into catagories

otherwise looks great

nicklauski

Pretty snazzy. good job lads.

Willbbz

My old subscriber avatar shows up in my posts. I'll enjoy that while it lasts

thenightrider

Just testing it out now on the HTC mozart looks good so far.

Basq

Tried to report a post and got:

Failed to decode JSON: Syntax error.

gaz wac

Trying to log on with iphone, enter username and password but, when i press "My Threads" it keeps asking me for my name / password ?

tbh

Looks really great guys, well done. One note: you can only reply without quoting by clicking the pen icon at the top of the page, could that be on the bottom of the page too?

tbh

Basq wrote: »

Tried to report a post and got:

same here. Also, when you reply to a thread, it doesn't add a subscription for the thread.

dr.bollocko

It really is so much better to use than m.boards. Lovin it so far.

TheZohanS

Looks nice on an iPad, very slick interface and much easier to navigate.

Sad Professor

tbh wrote: »

Looks really great guys, well done. One note: you can only reply without quoting by clicking the pen icon at the top of the page, could that be on the bottom of the page too?

In the meantime though you can just tap "clear text" to quickly get rid of the quote. No need to scroll to the top of the page.

Newaglish

Excellent, thanks. Quick question: how do I "View First Unread" on the touch site?

Minstrel27

I like it. Well done.

Earthhorse

TheZohan wrote: »

Looks nice on an iPad, very slick interface and much easier to navigate.

Yikes! Disagree. It doesn't even size to the screen on the iPad and pinch zoom is disabled. Much prefer just using the full site on the iPad.

Conor

Basq wrote: »

Tried to report a post and got:

That should be fixed now.

hamsterboy

Looks great on my Desire HD. Good Work.
Did notice that if I'm viewing my or any other profile and click on "View all posts by.... " or "View all threads started by....." I just get a random selection none of which are correct. Was telling me I started threads in the parenting section..... Unlikely
Like I said guys that's just a minor thing..Will definitely be usin it over m. boards

Cheers
HB

silvervixen84

Looks great, just tried it on my HTC Wildfire. Better than m.boards for clumsy people like me

_feedback_

Well done all - badly needed. Looks great so far.

Daysha

Not sure if this has been noticed before, but for those looking for a Boards.ie iPhone app you can add a link to touch.boards.ie directly onto your homescreen. I know you used to be able to do this in the past but the icon that came with it was just an ugly screenshot of that particular page. Now when I tried it for touch.boards.ie they use the boards.ie favicon/logo as the icon, so it looks like a fully-fledged iPhone app

Example

Willbbz

Daysha wrote: »

Not sure if this has been noticed before, but for those looking for a Boards.ie iPhone app you can add a link to touch.boards.ie directly onto your homescreen. I know you used to be able to do this in the past but the icon that came with it was just an ugly screenshot of that particular page. Now when I tried it for touch.boards.ie they use the boards.ie favicon/logo as the icon, so it looks like a fully-fledged iPhone app

Example

Same favicon works with m.boards.ie too

Eoin

Conor wrote: »

That should be fixed now.

Could you link to the other feedback thread please? I posted on it last night, but I don't seem to have been subscribed to it.

It looks great by the way, a massive improvement on the original mobile site.

Conor

Eoin wrote: »

Could you link to the other feedback thread please?

What other thread in Feedback?

Eoin wrote: »

I posted on it last night, but I don't seem to have been subscribed to it.

That bug was fixed last night at about 22:40ish.

Earthhorse

He means the thread in Site Dev which is here.

tommycahir

I have noticed that when I click on a link it actually opens it in the full version of the site eg in the Carlow charter URL="http://touch.boards.ie/thread/2055183314?page=1#post_72561711"]link[/URL if I click on any of the links there it goes to full www.boards.ie site

The old m.boards.ie site used to open any clicked links in the m.boards.ie site.

jumbone

How about an android app which just loads the touch site? It is only possible to have the bookmarks on a homescreen but i'd like to have a boards link on the app menu next to facebook for example.

Also bookmarks don't save the favicon...

Moonbeam

Was using it last night and it was awesome! so much easier to browse. Have not noticed anything to moan about yet:)

sdanseo

Fastastic on my iPhone 4. Works much better than m.boards.ie.

If I was to have one gripe, it would be that the quotes aren't shaded in a slightly different colour to the background. Would this be feasible?

tapit54

Good work guys, well done!

harney

I get an error trying to play a youtube embedded video - the error is "Your browser does not currently recognise any of the video formats available."

"Click here to visit our frequesntly asked questions about HTML5 video."

The link works for me in both the full version and m.boards.ie by launching my Youtube app.

I am using a Palm Pre (webOS). It is probably my browser, but might as well mention it.

Grudle

Is it possible to enable zoom on the page?
Using opera mobile on android and the page width is just slightly wider than the screen.
The stock browser renders the page to the same width as the screen though.

Dont be at yourself

Looks very nice on the iPhone.

Don't know if it'd be possible, but it'd be nice if there was more AJAX/HTML5 gubbins, instead of having to constantly load new webpages (to move to a new page in a thread, or when checking a post's thanks, etc). There's probably a data trade-off here, but the improved responsiveness would be worth it.

nkay1985

TheZohan wrote: »

Looks nice on an iPad, very slick interface and much easier to navigate.

Really? Have to say I think the full site works way better on the iPad.

Earthhorse wrote: »

Yikes! Disagree. It doesn't even size to the screen on the iPad and pinch zoom is disabled. Much prefer just using the full site on the iPad.

Yep agree with this. I'm not really sure what the point of it is. Always found the full site to be fine on my Galaxy S too but maybe this wil be better. I'll give it a try later.

Sad Professor

The only problem with using the full site on the iPad is spoiler tags. Apart from that it's next to perfect.

Thor

Used it for 10 minutes there, Have to say its perfect, Minor database error once or twice, But nothing to do with the new layout.

Great job!! Easy to navigate(Especially with 'My Forums') easy to write comments aswell. Looks amazing on Samsung Galaxy S2

CrowdedHouse

I like it

Doublechinlolz

Thank you It works perfect

evolutionqy7

great stuff

wish there was a button at the bottom of the page to reply to the thread.

PogMoThoin

No favicon, I'm being picky, amn't I

I like it, I never liked the mobile version and always browsed the full version on my phone. This also gives an option to thank and see avatars. Thumbs up guys.

ixoy

Definitely better than the old m. version on the Desire HD. Good stuff! Feels like I'm navigating something meant for smart phones and not WAP phones :P

zuroph

suggestion, instead of having forums have to reduce the amount of stickies, what if the view amalgamated stickies into a drop down expand/reduce on touch?

sioda

i find it a little slow m.boards is lightning quick.

Also do i have to mark forums as read as on the touch site all my fora or starred but using m.boards they are only starred if new posts have appeared.

Also dont understand why the new site needed sticky reduction

beer enigma

Much easier to use on iPhone

celticbest

I have a Windows 7 phone and I always used boards.ie, I could see no difference between this and touch.boards.ie ??