

Ask HN: Have we reached the point where sites need a mobile AND tablet version? - ecaron

We finally launched the mobile version of LinkUp this week, and since then we've heard nothing but requests of "when will the tablet version be ready?"<p>Asking this question on SO, you hear nothing but mantras about "responsive design" and "go where the users are." Great points given infinite resources, but if we had those we wouldn't be on HN on a weekend. I had thought that the point of tablet was to make the desktop-experience more portable, but the cries of the masses are leading me to think I was misled.<p>So to the Hacker News community - are tablet-oriented websites really something in our future?
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flexxaeon
The reason you're getting requests for a "tablet version" may be because (when
I tested it out) you're redirecting tablets to the m. version of the site. As
you said, a tablet can handle much of what a desktop can, so tablet users tend
to be a little annoyed when they are forced onto a version of the site that is
clearly made for smaller devices.

I think if you alter your redirection rules to allow tablets to go to the main
version of the site, that may satisfy most of your users until you can get a
responsive design going.

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ecaron
You'd think - except it was the iPad users that were the first ones asking why
we didn't have a mobile version:-) I suppose you can't win them all, right?

~~~
flexxaeon
Yeah, unfortunately "can't win them all" has been part of the developer
platform since the dawn of the internet.

I didn't drill down deep into the UX on the site, but the m. version isn't
_that_ bad on a tablet - it's just quite obviously more fitting to a screen
300-400 pixels wide.

If you had iPad users previously saying they wanted a "mobile" version, see if
you can figure out what specifically it was about the desktop version of the
site that was bugging them. Do the same for the people asking about a "tablet
version", and then find a happy medium of the two to start working towards.

Of course you can already predict that a desktop AND mobile AND tablet version
is approaching silly, which is why the feedback you got before was a
resounding "responsive design". At the moment, that's the closest you can get
to "winning them all".

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TeMPOraL
> I had thought that the point of tablet was to make the desktop-experience
> more portable

Desktops and tablets are designed around two completely different principles.
Interaction on desktop is about clicking and typing; tablets are all about
multitouch - dragging, pinching, swiping, etc.

As a general point, it saddens me that even tablet app developers seem to
forget that tablets have a) bigger screens and b) multitouch. Clearly, new UI
metaphors have to be invented for multitouch devices.

