College blogs are now compatible for browsing on many mobile devices. The blogs, which cover everything and anything related to student and staff life at the College, are now easy to open and can be read on various mobile phone types. Our bloggers can already submit posts from their mobiles, now we can read them whilst on the go.
What the new format means for mobile users
- Easier to view – refined content format for a smaller screen size so you can view each blog more easily.
- Navigation – simple up and down function for scrolling to the blog content, bigger buttons and fewer choices, and a simplified navigation and layout.
- Speed – maybe a small page load reduction, therefore faster browsing
What the new format means for bloggers
This is also good news. Their blogs are now more accessible so we can read and comment on their posts more easily whilst we are on the go.
How were the blogs developed for mobile devices?
Two plugins were used to carry out the majority of the work: jQtouch and WPMobileDetector.
Next steps…
General College blogs: www.imperial.ac.uk/blog
The approach to these was to develop something simple that would serve a large number of different form formats so they would be accessible to many different phone types. Going forward the focus will probably be on pepping up the theme and in the future focus on support for touch phones.
Student blogs: www.imperial.ac.uk/campus_life/studentblogs
Students make up the largest readership of these blogs so they were developed to serve touch phones. No more major development is anticipated for these other than some optimisation here and there
Useful tip – if your web connection is down you could search the ICT FAQ blog on your mobile to find a resolution!
