Thursday, July 31, 2003
Mobile Site Enhancements: Subscribers Now Have ClearType Option
Posted by Jason Dunn in "UPDATE" @ 01:18 PM
I'm pleased to announce a relatively minor, but very cool enhancement to subscriber services: ClearType on the mobile site! Subscribers have the ability to turn ClearType on and off on the Pocket PC templates that wrap around our entire site. The effect is quite nice on the Pocket PC and Smartphone! The ClearType effect is turned on by default for all subscribers. If for some reason you don't like it, you can click on Customize in the upper-right corner of the site, then "Customize your Pocket PC Experience" on the right, and you'll see the option for ClearType.
We had ClearType on Pocket PC Thoughts way back in 2001, but the problem was that if anyone was using a sub pixel-based resolution tool (Jimmy Landscape was the popular one back then) it would cause a "double ClearType" effect that looked awful. I had to disable it because it made the site unreadable for a core group of people. Now that we have subscriber profiles, and everything is dynamic, we can give subscribers the ability to turn this off or on.
And if you're one of the seven or so people browsing Pocket PC Thoughts using a Smartphone :lol:, here's a cool feature we've added for everyone (subscribers and non-subscribers alike): you can press numbers on your keypad to jump to stories on the front page. For instance, if you want to view the third story on the page, press the number three on your phone. Pressing the zero key takes you back to the top of the mobile site. I should note that if you're a subscriber and browsing PPCT on your Smartphone, there's something a little fishy about the ClearType - certain letters like "y" look horrible. I don't know if it's a SPV-specific issue or not, but I'll look into it further.
Enjoy the enhancements! We've got some big things planned in the next two weeks, including the discount coupons page, and the beginning of a very, very big prize giveaway. Woo hoo! :mrgreen:
We had ClearType on Pocket PC Thoughts way back in 2001, but the problem was that if anyone was using a sub pixel-based resolution tool (Jimmy Landscape was the popular one back then) it would cause a "double ClearType" effect that looked awful. I had to disable it because it made the site unreadable for a core group of people. Now that we have subscriber profiles, and everything is dynamic, we can give subscribers the ability to turn this off or on.
And if you're one of the seven or so people browsing Pocket PC Thoughts using a Smartphone :lol:, here's a cool feature we've added for everyone (subscribers and non-subscribers alike): you can press numbers on your keypad to jump to stories on the front page. For instance, if you want to view the third story on the page, press the number three on your phone. Pressing the zero key takes you back to the top of the mobile site. I should note that if you're a subscriber and browsing PPCT on your Smartphone, there's something a little fishy about the ClearType - certain letters like "y" look horrible. I don't know if it's a SPV-specific issue or not, but I'll look into it further.
Enjoy the enhancements! We've got some big things planned in the next two weeks, including the discount coupons page, and the beginning of a very, very big prize giveaway. Woo hoo! :mrgreen:
