I second this – my standard site design is tablet friendly, so I definitely don’t want the mobile site on tablets (only on phones). The obvious thing to do would be to make this a selectable option, so the user can decide what they want.
I third this — The original need to serve a compact, minimalist design for a blog/site was the small physical screen size of smart phones, and some optimization for downloading, etc. It follows, then, to serve up pages designed for phones to the comparatively gigantic screen sizes and powerful processors of today’s tablets is just counter-intuitive, if not detrimental to the original format/content of a standard layout.
I guess the first question to ask: Is it possible to detect the difference between a request to view the blog/site from a smart phone and a tablet device? If the answer is yes, there is simply no reason to serve a compressed format for a phone to a large format tablet.
If the answer is no, then at the very least, I agree with ljmac that an option to view the original blog/site format should be included and prominently displayed to the tablet user.
Let me say: Kudos to the WPSmart Mobile team for an excellent plugin. I recently defected from WPTouch due to their intrusive and manipulative tactics. Your offering is elegant and respectful of the user and I am recommending it to all my clients and friends. Thank you.
I too have defected from WPTouch, due to their outrageously poor support. I gave them very detailed bug reports, but they either ignored them, or just gave me the usual “disable other plug-ins” BS when I’d already done that.
Anyway, it absolutely is possible to tell the difference between a tablet and a smart phone – my suggestion was to allow the webmaster to choose whether he wants the mobile or desktop theme on tablets.
Anyway, kudos from me for an excellent plug-in too – very simple and elegant, but with almost all the features you need (if this feature plus the ability to have paginated index pages can be added, I’ll be very happy indeed).
Thanks for the clarification, ljmac. Since different types of devices are detectable across the same operating systems, I completely agree with your suggestion that the choice of what format to serve should be the admin’s choice. Why even bother the user with the option, not to mention the unnecessary code served to the device.
I also like the suggestion about pagination of indexed pages. WPSmart should prove to be the optional plugin we’ve been waiting for–It’s off to an excellent start.
Hey guys,
First off, thanks for those awesomely awesome words :). As far as the tablet support, yes, that’s something that will be fixed in the next update which should be coming soon, so keep an eye out for that.
We’ll also take a look into the paginated index pages features (though honestly that wasn’t on our current roadmap so it might have to wait until a later update).
Keep an eye out for an update in the coming days!
Thanks,
Henry
Hi Henry,
I’ve tried an online iPad simulator (I don’t have access to any real tablets believe it or not), and it appears to use the desktop theme, which is how I want it to be. Anyway, as I said it makes sense to give the admin the option to decide whether he wants the mobile theme or the desktop theme on tablets.
As for paginated index pages, it would simply be a workaround for those of us experiencing problems with “load more”. If those problems can be solved however, I am perfectly happy with that.
Regards,
Lee
Hey guys, in the updated version (1.0.4), the plugin will no longer show up on tablets. We’ll be releasing tablet themes in the near future 🙂
Thanks! Tablet themes sound like a good idea, but please ensure you do two things:
1) Make sure the admin has the option to use the desktop theme.
2) They sound like a big undertaking, so please make sure the plug-in itself is rock solid first (such as fixing the comment form conflicts with anti-spam software).
