BLOG RENEWAL: combox and mobile theme

Under another entry a commentator said that, in his experience, there is an odd glitch in the combox.  He says that the input editor suppresses a space between the punctuation at the end of a sentence and the beginning of the next sentence.

Has anyone else seen that?  I have not.

Also, he says that the new mobile mode is not as friendly as the previous one for his Palm Treo.

I have adjusted the mobile theme a couple times now.  It was my impression that it was working pretty well now.   This is a case in which I have to go with what works with the majority.  I don’t believe there is an option using a plugin that detects the type of mobile browser and then pushes a particular theme to it.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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13 Comments

  1. Vincenzo says:

    Happy Birthday Father Z!

  2. frjim4321 says:

    If you copy and past any of the comments into MS Word or similar text editor you can verify that there is only one space between sentences.

    The previous mobile mode that worked best for me was very simple and just had the website title followed by a simple list of links to the topics. Now it’s very graphic and slow-loading, with lots of scrolling needs to go from topic to topic.

  3. Frank H says:

    FrJim,

    You might verify that your device’s browser has the “mobile theme” turned on. I am getting the clean, simple mobile version you describe on my iPhone.

  4. Frank H says:

    And I echo Vincenzo’s “Happy Birthday, Father Z!”

  5. Choirmaster says:

    Regarding Spacing: It is a long-standing typographical convention to increase the amount of space between a full-stop (period) and the first character if the following sentence. During the time of the typewriter’s ascendancy as a means of document production, many typographical conventions were suspended or adapted to accommodate the fixed-width characters and spaces. One of these conventions was to use two space-characters after a full stop to approximate the look and flow of the extra space used in professionally-typeset publications.

    This convention has fallen out of widespread use, and the MLA Handbook and the MLA Style Manual now show examples with only one space after a full-stop.

    But, to answer the question of the reader trying to type two spaces after a full-stop. In HTML, the language used to build web-pages, the rendering engine within most browsers produces only one space between all words characters, no matter how many were typed into the source code. This is a feature, not a bug, so that even after abbreviations and non-full-stop periods there is the same amount of space in the final product.

    If a commenter wishes to “force” the rendering agent to draw extra spaces between his sentences, then he should enter the following sequence (I describe it because if I type it in then you will only see a blank space):

    Words words words. [space] [ampersand]nbsp[semicolon] [space] More words for the next sentence.

    Here is an example: There   are   extra   spaces.

  6. chonak says:

    My Palm Centro is seeing the same behavior: the mobile theme is not being applied automatically. Is there a URL I could use to explicitly request the mobile theme?

  7. Looks great on my Blackberry! Happy Birthday Father! Watch your MSG intake at Tea House. ;-)

  8. O Patre, felix dies natalis! (I won’t mangle the Latin language anymore….)

  9. Melody says:

    Happy Birthday Father!

    My old Nokia has been giving me an error message of “Could not remove handler” lately when I try to load your site. It’s also loading much more slowly. I tried the site just now and it was not very readable.

    Thanks for attending to this issue. I often keep up with WDTPRS during my morning bus ride.

  10. mvhcpa says:

    Well, the current mobile treatment is working our GREAT for me now–I was having plenty of navigation problems with one of the most recent previous mobile themes. I can even sign in and post again from my iPhone, which I couldn’t do on the theme that was being used a few months back.

    Michael Val
    (who wishes Father Z the happiness of this natal day of his plus a multitude of future felicitous years!)

  11. If people have concrete suggestions for a mobile solution, feel free to send me email.

  12. Melody says:

    It’s working great now! I’m posting this from my phone.

Comments are closed.