Help required from Geeks with posh phones

[IP-Alarms 0]

We provide an alarm and camera monitoring platform to security installers worldwide and every so often I have to investigate what cell phones people are using and how recorded JPeg images display on those phones from our intentionally simple cell phone interface.

 

It is simply not possible to build an interface for each device, so we have to try and strike a balance between older, small screen phones logging in via a 38K GPRS connection and our geeky customers logging in with their iPhones and Blackberries.

 

Conscious of limited bandwidth requirements, we currently display the list of images for the last alarm event as thumbnails with the idea that the user clicks to enlarge the thumbnail. It sounds lazy, but that is often 1 extra click that some people do not want to make.

 

If any of you geeky kids out there have time to log into our platform and have a look, I'd appreciate your feedback on how it looks and what you would suggest for improvement for your particular brand of phone.

 

The URL is http://www.ipalarms.net/cell.aspx and you can use ID: 1 and Password: dem0 (that's a zero not the letter 0) to log in.

 

Questions I need to answer are:

 

1. Is the list of events and list of thumbnails too simple ?

2. What percentage of your screen do the thumbnalis cover and what percentage does the full size image cover.

3. Do the larger 640x480 images display OK ?

4. Could you get Live View to work ?

 

Oh, the main login for computer browsers is http://www.ipalarms.net/login.aspx - you can use the same login credentilas and it would be interesting to hear if the full interface is workable on a mobile device.

 

Thanks in Advance for any help you can offer.

[gorky 0]

Hi there,

 

1. Is the list of events and list of thumbnails too simple ?

No, but do have to zoom in quite a bit to view descriptions etc.

 

2. What percentage of your screen do the thumbnalis cover and what percentage does the full size image cover.

About 10% down the left side. I can send you a few screen grabs if you like?

 

3. Do the larger 640x480 images display OK ?

Yes, open in new window but are plenty useful.

 

4. Could you get Live View to work ?

Yes, but auto-refresh keeps the image too small to be useful.

(Have to zoom in to see anything anyway)

 

Using: iPhone 3GS

 

Cheers

[IP-Alarms 0]

Thanks for your reply - much appreciated.

 

Could you wait another day or so whilst I make some changes based on your feedback and then try again before posting your screenshots ?

 

I will update this thread once I've made the changes

[craiga 0]

Hi.

Add:

To the

section of all your pages -- this should improve things for some pages and allow you more flexibility when laying out pages in general.

 

You can improve the experience for iphone users specifically by specifying a CSS that's specific for iphone.

 

for iphone (only) CSS:

href="iPhone.css" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" />

 

It's really worth investigating how you can use CSS to create a web experience which is like a native iphone app, See:

http://building-iphone-apps.labs.oreilly.com/ch02.html#ch02_id35932399

 

This basic CSS approach is really simple and greatly improves user experience.

 

More advanced features of smartphones can be exploited using PhoneGap or JQTouch.

-Craig

[IP-Alarms 0]

Thanks Craig,

 

I will look into your suggestions. We are familier with CSS, so it shouldn't be a problem.