Do you visit our sites with a smartphone/tablet ? Thread

Dear modders and game devs,

As you may already know we're modernizing the sites of ModDB and IndieDB (see the news post of Scott: Moddb.com) this year, and we'd like to know how many people use their smartphones/tablets (frequently) on our sites. We shall be putting a lot of effort into ModDB this year, as the new version will fit to both resolutions (responsive).

For those of you who don't use their smartphones to visit DB's sites, would you use your smartphone if there was a responsive version? Which features do you want on the mobile version? Let me know in the comments below!

By the way, if you guys want to submit your ideas about the future version of the site, there's a topic dedicated to that: Moddb.com

Thanks!

Edited by: Thib

I don't use my mobile phone for browsing ModDB but I think this site should become mobile friendly since well their use has become more frequent.

I use a phone sometimes if I want to check comments while I'm out, but pretty annoying. Can't wait for the site to be responsive!

Have you checked out the design we made for www.indiedb.com our first attempt at responsive? Responsive to ModDB is coming but it'll be a slow process! Oh and I can do better than a poll and show you detailed stats from google analytics.

I spend a lot more time on my phone than my PC these days, but almost all of my ModDB use is on the PC, so yeah, I'm definitely in the "Would use if it was mobile-friendly" boat. Right now scrolling and zooming for basic use is a pain.

Okay, and which features do you guys would like to see on a mobile version? PM system, comments ?

All the features?, there shouldn't be a cut down mobile version.

Yeah, I mean which parts of the website users would visit the most on mobiles? Just to give me an idea of the responsive version.

Comments would definitely be a priority, since that's basically half the site (considering the forums are dead as of yet ). Viewing tracked updates and generally browsing the mod catalogue or mod profiles are at least my next most used features. I'd also retain the description shortening. While I'm relatively indifferent on that as far as the PC version goes, huge descriptions might not translate too well over to mobile. Especially ones that make use of Flash, or have large feature lists.

Edited by: ChrisBryant

I use both, but there's lots of sites that show usage statistics for devices that might be worth looking in to.

Use both and never had a problem with scrolling around on the indiedb pc site. The point is that responsive designs and mobile sites in general are much more difficult to use. Everywhere you click something happens and if you don't watch out you land on 3 different sites. They're alsonmuch slower than the normal static sites since every action requires a script to run.

So my suggestions for a mobile dbolical would be:

1. Don't try to fill up one site with as possible, put your effort in a minimalistic layout and clearly arranged content.
2. Make it easy to use and as I already mentioned well-arranged(!)
3. Please, and this is very important, reflect the positioning of ads twice! You can do so much wrong with ads on a mobile site, eg overlapping with content, unclearly sperated, too aggressive, ...
4. And of course a button to go to the standard pc version

The features I use the most are thread watching and looking for active topics (pretty useful!)

I would use a mobile design but yeah I am quite finnicky

The VRDB website looks very smart. wd.

Comes down to personal taste yet I like darker themes [CSS]. Bright ones punish the eyes when you work long hours.

Personally, I almost never use the mob. phone. However display differences between 4K, desktop, handheld tablet and VR headsets (??) gives good reason to implement responsive already.

Best of luck with developing the switch overs and thanxs for everything you have done so far