Posted on 03/10/2010 5:19:29 PM PST by big bad easter bunny
I have been using my Blackberry a lot more these days to surf, unfortunately only ten articles for Freerepublic appear and there is no way to view more and most of the time the whole page shifts and the site is unusable, maybe a mobi site?
I’d love to see it too. Conservatism is going mobile!
I'm in the shower a lot.
Get an iPhone. Works great :-)
One could make a case for surfing FR on the throne too....I spend a lot of time there. Better yet a mobi site that could be surfed from the throne!!
Droid does too...love the web browser
i don’t care for Apple but thanks for the suggestion.
I use FreeRepublic mobile (iPod touch, Blackberry work, Motorola Droid personal line) and it is about the only forum that works perfectly on all three.
What kind of Blackberry are you using? I am on a Storm and it works fine. If you have a Storm, I would suggest downloading the Opera browser.
If you want, however, you can use FR on a .mobi site. There are some you can use the RSS feed to view articles.
Other than trouble with my eyes getting too old, I don’t have any problem getting to FR on my Blackberry. All you gotta do is scroll.
But then, just about every element on one's life can be done on a mobile phone here in Japan.
Still one problem might be than when some "yahoo!" decides to get on a thread on FR, and cuts and pastes a long, winding, multigraphic, multi link "spam" message going on for line after line after line. When mobile, after scrolling down for minutes (and sometimes giving up midstream,) to get to the next comment, one could well be an excellent candidate for Lasik surgery....
As a Blackberry user, let me offer this tip for successful FReeping.
While the Freerepublic.com site is open, press the blackberry button, then select COLUMN VIEW, then wait for the page to reload, then you will be very pleased with your FReeping on a Blackberry. You may wish to alter text size.
Enjoy!
tmi
FR on the iPhone works for me, too. Although it would be nice if some Freeper with an iPhone software development kit could create an iPhone app for it.
Working on it when I have time.... also working on an Android app. (all unofficial)
Try Opera Mini Beta
That lets you see a nicely almost anti-aliased view of the exact webpage content as envisioned by the developer (nowadays an artist-y person who spent a lot of time figuring out how to present information) but with your fingers lets you go in and out as necessary to make the content look nice on your smaller screen.
It is a brilliant way to help make content that wasn't designed for a 320x480 screen work acceptably on such a screen.
a few years ago I had a Palm Treo. I tried it here and it workded fine.unfortunately I lost it.
a few years ago I had a Palm Treo. I tried it here and it workded fine.unfortunately I lost it.
Someday, I'll maybe get the balls to approach somebody with a device better than my Jitterbug phone and axe a few questions - and maybe get a demo.....or punched in the mouth.
Yea, it’s a little bit awkward posting but reading is a snap.
Link to the RSS feed here at FR, bookmark and yer BB will work fine..........fastest way to check FR on the move !
I have been using my Blackberry a lot more these days to surf, unfortunately only ten articles for Freerepublic appear and there is no way to view more and most of the time the whole page shifts and the site is unusable, maybe a mobi site?
Actually, the iPhone from Apple works great and there's no need to change the website to any special formatting. The same format that works on regular desktop computers (and laptops) works just fine on the iPhone. It uses a regular browser to cruise the net.
Now, there's your solution... :-)
iPhone 3GS features Safari — the most advanced web browser ever on a mobile phone. Use it to surf the real web, really fast.
Browse the web
On Safari, you see the real web — not a stripped-down mobile version — whether you’re connecting via Wi-Fi, 3G, or EDGE. iPhone always connects you to the fastest network available.Get a closer look
Zoom in and out of websites with a double tap or a pinch. For a larger view, rotate iPhone 90 degrees to landscape. The web page rotates and fills the screen.Save and sync bookmarks
When you bookmark sites on iPhone, those bookmarks sync with your Mac or PC.Put your favorite sites on your Home screen
If you check a website frequently, iPhone can create a Home screen icon for it — a web clip. That way your favorite sites are always just a tap away.
Switch to a PALM phone 3G.
Its behind the Technology curve and it fits on one screen.
An android ap would be cool.
The page layout is fine but my fingers are too big to comfortably peruse FR on the phone. A dedicated ap would make life easier.
I eat a lot of alphabet soup. I’d like to be able to surf Free Republic by reading the pasta shapes in my soup. That’s what I would like.
agree, my iphone on FR works just fine, spread text and read. works for me. may need to start wearing my glasses soon though... LOL
Nice commercial but where is the flash support?
Also, when surfing on the phone I like to pop open a few web pages at the same time, does Safari on the iPhone do that? Honest question, I don’t know.
Nice commercial but where is the flash support?
Flash is trash-ware... causes too many crashes on computers... iPhone doesn't want trashware on it.
iPhone does fine with H.264 video ... and you see big websites converting over to that video support instead of Flash-trashware... (like YouTube, for example).
Also, when surfing on the phone I like to pop open a few web pages at the same time, does Safari on the iPhone do that? Honest question, I don’t know.
It doesn't have (on the iPhone) something like "tabs" where you can click on a tab to go from one webpage to another one -- but it has something similar, which is a button at the bottom of the screen, which allows you to go from one webpage to another. When you tap the button, you get a smaller webpage, so you see the whole thing (takes up about 1/2 of the screen)
You can just leave a webpage in place when you finish with it, and come back in a couple of days (let's say) and that webpage is still there (or several webpages would still be there).
I don't know how many webapges that one can open up at the same time, but I've had maybe about 8 at one time. What you do is you "finger-flick" to one of the eight webpages -- just like you've seen them flipping from one photo to the next. It works with the webpages, you flip from one to the next and then you simply tap the one you want and it comes up full page.
Flash is incredibly unstable. And since most aggressive Flash apps are trying to decode video, it has to be given low level access to video hardware. While people don't seem to mind when their PC or browser crashes regularly, that is completely unacceptable behavior on a phone. That's why Apple is holding off from supporting Adobe Flash. A wise, if near-term painful, decision. For example, if I have one tab doing AJAX (like gmail), if any other tab tries to do Flash video my whole desktop will hang. And that's on a mac. Those things almost never hang.
HTML 5 will offer the video aspects that make Flash possible, without the awful programming implementation of Adobe. That's what Apple appears to be waiting for.
Also, when surfing on the phone I like to pop open a few web pages at the same time, does Safari on the iPhone do that? Honest question, I don’t know.
Yeah, the iphone does that just fine.
agree, my iphone on FR works just fine, spread text and read. works for me. may need to start wearing my glasses soon though... LOL
Yeah, I know about the glasses ... :-) but for me, I'm just getting old.
But, hey! ... that spreading the text, I've found that the "tap-tap" works great on an article on a webpage. It automatically resizes the page real quickly to make just that one column fill up the entire screen so you can see it up close and personal.
And then, "tap-tap" again and you're back out, instantly to the full webpage once again. It's quick and it's slick. You couldn't ask for better.
I eat a lot of alphabet soup. I’d like to be able to surf Free Republic by reading the pasta shapes in my soup. That’s what I would like.
With way over 100,000 apps on the iPhone... I'm sure iPhone "has an app for that" .... LOL ...
Indeed they do.
tap-tap doesn’t seem to work for me. Grab and spread works. Not sure what you mean by taptap.
tap-tap doesn’t seem to work for me. Grab and spread works. Not sure what you mean by taptap.
Steve Jobs is always using the New York Times for a demo when he's showing the product, or like the iPad, too... So, using the New York Times for an example...
You go to their front page and you'll see several columns. And, of course, seeing the whole page, that makes each column very tiny and you wouldn't want to get out your magnifying glass to see that one column (i.e., article) to read.
So, while the entire page is showing, you just put your finger over that one column and just go "tap-tap" with your finger and that entire column comes up "full screen" -- just by itself. When you finished reading that column, you go "tap-tap" again, and it goes out to the full webpage and you can quickly go to another column on that same page and go (once again) "tap-tap" and you quickly go to that column.
I'm surprised you haven't come across that yet... :-)
I don’t have flash yet on my phone and I miss it. I would love Hulu when I’m stuck somewhere waiting. I’ve got a few movies ripped to the phone for those occasions but I would like to have the flexibility that flash would give me.
I had not heard about Youtube switching from flash to H.264 so I just googled it, they did not stop using flash, they are using flash h.264 but it is still flash. We can both watch Youtube with an app but nobody is releasing a Hulu ap.
I’m hoping for flash on my phone soon.
By the way, the same thing works for Google Maps, too... when you get a map you want, you go “tap-tap” on the map and it comes in closer. But, to go “out” and further away, you use two fingers at once and tap both fingers at the same time — but only “one tap” (both fingers at the same time) and the map goes out.
You can “tap-tap” on the Google Maps all the way in (over and over again) to the full magnification, or using the “two-finger-tap” (just one tap) and keep going out and out and out again.
And with pictures... the “tap-tap” works there, too.
Apple iPhone (and iPad) has the “finger-control” down to a science and it’s super-slick the way Apple has worked their user interface. Apple is the best of anyone, at it... for sure.
ok, didn’t try that, I thought we were talking about FR which taptap doesn’t work. Like Drudge app, they have a menu to select which column which is fine too. Thanks Startravler!
I’m hoping for flash on my phone soon.
If you're talking about an iPhone... you're not going to see Flash on it. What websites are going to do is go to implementing video with H.264 or open standards for the web (and Apple will do it).
And also, for YouTube, there's a YouTube app right on your front screen on the iPhone. Whenever you go to a webpage that has a YouTube video on the webpage and you click on that YouTube link, it will go to the YouTube app and you will be viewing it automatically that way.
And Hulu, by the way, is going over to the iPhone. I read about it recently. So, eveyone is coming over to the iPhone and making their videos work with open standards on the web.
Blackberry reads great for Free Republic. I use it all the time when away from my computer.
I use a BB Tour and FR works perfect!
I do FR almost exclusively on my crackberry, and I have no problem with it at all. I see everything exactly like I would on a PC, even in remote parts of Mexico.
I also use an iPhone and Safari in landscape mode. My only complaint is I wish the links for ‘browse’ etc were a little bigger (maybe a button rather than a link?).
Try doing a "double-tap" just to the right side of "Browse . Search". Do it close to Search but don't hit the link "Search".
If you do that, it will bring the screen up close to those links and make it a lot easier to choose "Browse".
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