Mobile & Old Computers

Bottom line, until I took it down last week Amaz0ns was running on five year old software. That’s really damned old on the web, which is bad for a lot of reasons, but it’s also good for one big reason: nobody is left out with access problems. A new site means it will be easier for users to access Amaz0ns with a phone, but if you’re using older hardware you may have some difficulties.

Mobile upside
The new site templates are a lot more mobile-friendly than the old site, so you should feel no hesitation about using your phone to access Amaz0ns. The Samsung tablet I tested it on looked a little weird, so I’ll check that and see if I can make it better, but it works great on standard laptop and desktop monitors as well as on phones. I don’t have an iPad, which is the leading mobile access device people use for Amaz0ns, so if somebody could post some screen grabs and comments about how it works, I’d be much obliged.

Beige box downside
The mobile template kicks in below about 985 pixels wide and thus old, small monitors may wind up displaying the mobile view. If you’re not familiar with mobile interfaces you may struggle for a while, but you’ll get used to it. Also, if you’re using a really old PC rig – and I know at least one user is still running IE 6 (which was released two weeks before 9/11/2001) and a few others are running IE 7 – you may have trouble with the new site. It might not display correctly at all.

If you’re still running Windows XP or an earlier Windows OS and can’t afford a new PC, you might want to look into switching from Windows to Lubuntu on the same box: http://lubuntu.net/ If you have questions ask them here and I’ll try to help you out.