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  1. #1
    Senior Member franko's Avatar
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    Default Not long now to make your web site mobile friendly

    Here's a wake up call: Google to use mobile friendliness as a ranking signal from April 21st.

    How far away is a responsive output NoF? If it's later than a couple of months, many users are going to jump ship.

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    Senior Member Trimdoner's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by franko View Post
    Here's a wake up call: Google to use mobile friendliness as a ranking signal from April 21st.

    How far away is a responsive output NoF? If it's later than a couple of months, many users are going to jump ship.
    I've already has a couple of alerts from Google about my remaining three NOF websites that don't respond kindly to mobile users, stating more or less that the sites won't feature in search results from mobile users - this even includes one that uses script redirects to a mobile-friendly 320px size..!
    These pages will not be seen as mobile-friendly by Google Search, and will therefore be displayed and ranked appropriately for smartphone users.
    I already know from my web stats that about 70% of visitors to all my sites use mobile or tablet devices - desktop users are a diminishing user base

  3. #3
    Senior Member franko's Avatar
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    Pretty much all the sites I manage are built in NoF. I may have to spring the $US179 for Macaw until NoF finally catches up with RWD.
    Last edited by franko; 03-12-2015 at 06:10 AM.

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    Senior Member Trimdoner's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by franko View Post
    Pretty much all the sites I manage are built in NoF. I may have to spring the $US179 for Macaw until NoF finally catches up with RWD.
    A few years ago I built many of my sites using the textbox size-to-layout/no master borders method.
    It was a simple enough process to use 'template' pages rather than the master border approach, and ensured they displayed well on the 640 to 1024px monitors which were the general standard at the time.

    This worked well until monitor sizes started to get wider and wider, making pages look ridiculous - a simple graphic could control the minimum width, but there was no easy way to control the maximum page width.

    Surely this method could be refined by NOF to produce a workable solution without having to re-engineer the whole product. (Something I have a feeling is not going to happen)

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    google will punish you if your pages take too long to load and as with many sites that use responsive design, they get punished because they use large file sizes so that their sites look good when the graphic expands to 1920x1080 or even 4k resolution

    so it is a win and lose situation, you can only win if you design so that a site looks shit on a large screen and good on a small one

  6. #6
    Senior Member franko's Avatar
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    But does anyone seriously run a full-screen sized browser on a 1920 wide monitor? The whole point of such hi-res screens is to be able to have a number of windows open simultaneously with all or most of them in view. Personally I can't see designing a page more than 1024 wide that floats in the centre of the browser window. Anything wider that doesn't use text columns of a reasonable size will rapidly become unintelligible to read (in the print days it was reckoned 2.5 inches was the optimum width for a column to ensure readability; I don't think it's any different for a screen. A photographers or videographers site, sure, you can make the pix bigger but not if the purpose of the site is real written information.
    Last edited by franko; 03-12-2015 at 11:20 PM.

  7. #7
    Senior Member Beach Ape's Avatar
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    I'm finding wysiwyg webuilder an excellent value at $49.95 that includes BOTH RWS and a CMS.
    http://docs.macaw.co/
    But I'm sure Macaw would allow you coding a CMS if time isn't money.

  8. #8

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    OK, so perhaps a silly question on this. I'm using NOF version 12 and I too have just recently received the warning message from Google saying my site is not mobile device friendly.

    What will happen if I simply include the meta tag string:

    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, maximum-scale=1">

    The Google "solution" to the problem seemed to indicate this was mostly all I had to do.

    Comments and suggestions anyone?

    Thanks,
    - Bill

  9. #9
    Senior Member franko's Avatar
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    Fact is, most if not all device browsers will display a web page reasonably well although you may have to zoom to read smaller text. RWD is not necessarily the answer for information heavy web sites although for small, graphic dominated sites it works well. Using the viewport meta will help as far as Google is concerned as far as I read it at the moment but IMHO Google is throwing its weight around try to dominate the design of the internet much as Microsloth did in the mid-'90s. And it will have just as much success. People will simply stop using Google now that it's started serving its search result in line with its own interests rather than the value of the web page.

    But then, people tend not to visit information heavy sites with smartphones anyway because they're well, after information and small screens are not conducive to reading a lot of info. So the rule seems to be emerging: intensive content = normal site; graphic intensive site = responsive.

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    Senior Member warrenr's Avatar
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    Hi Franko

    I see you mention Macaw as being an alternative to NOF! I have been using NOF for several years and have done over 200 Customer sites with it. While I still don't consider knowing everything there is to know about NOF, it has taking me several years, to be able in my mind at least, to produce reasonable sites. As NOF seems not be going anywhere on the responsive front and more and more clients are insisting on mobile friendly sites I need to look at an alternative. I am not a young man and learning something new is not something I relish, but out of necessity I need to do so.

    My question is do you really feel that Macaw is the answer and worth going through the learning curve?

    I am asking for your advice as I have been following this Forum for many years and have always found your recommendations and advice sound!

    Regards
    Warren

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