Mar 17, 2011

The Barley Blog Goes Mobile

Barley Blog mobile screenshot

I’m addicted to web traffic stats. There isn’t a moment when I don’t have real time reports running on any of the sites that I maintain. One of the interesting items that I’ve been noticing — and really a telling tale of how people are starting to access the Web in general — is an ever increasing number of visitors hitting the blog on mobile devices. iPhone, Android and iPad are usually the top three systems at any given day.

I personally don’t own any of those three devices (though that will be changing this weekend) and only just recently saw what the site looks like on a mobile browser. Working in the web design industry, I know what can be done for a site to make it more digestible on smaller screens with a little HTML and CSS wizardry. I had to do something.

Earlier this week I announced via Twitter that I had purchased a shorter domain (brly.co) with which you can access The Barley Blog — the less typing on a touch screen the better. Now, I’ve also set up the blog with a completely different layout specifically built for mobile devices.

Any time you come to The Barley Blog from your traditional browser, nothing will change. It will look as it has since the last redesign. However, if you visit on your handy iPhone or Android device, you’ll be presented with a scaled down homepage and more readable posts. There are a couple of tweaks that need to be made in terms of viewing the site in landscape on those devices, but they won’t impact your reading experience.

If you are hitting up the site on your mobile phone (those with a modern web browser) and see something that may not look right or is broken, please feel free to let me know via the comment form below. Thanks!

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