Moving site to touch screen friendly

[maxelcat]

Hi

About 18 months ago we built a biggish site (for us!) around joomla. The client was very happy with the site. However, at the time it was decided not to be overly concerned about the mobile market. We incorporated some drop down menus that appear using the "hover" command, based around the good old sucker fish. Perhaps, in retorspect this wasn't he wisest thing!!!

Now our client wants to go "iDevice" friendly - of course, these menus don't work on iPad and iPhones, becuase there is no hover (or so I think!).

A few possible options have occured as to how we can edit the site so that these drop downs either work, or are removed for those devices that don't support hover.

I was wondering if you guys out there could perhaps point us in the right direction before we jump in and start experimenting, since we have not done a lot of mobile work up to this point. Would it be better for us to just do away with the drop-downs for these touch screen devices, or convert the whole lot so it works on "Click" rather than "Hover". Should we be sniffing out the availablity of "hover" as our test? Are there any good resources that you could recommend? How might we best approach this problem?

If you want to see the site its www.coinstreet.org

I/we would really appreciate any pointers!

[pixelsoul]

Personally I would try moving away from the drop down menu system all together. That way you will have continuity across your standard site and the mobile version. Using an accordion style sub-navigation works still on touch screen if you needed to (the type you click on to show the navigation links) but I would only use that as well if you had a very large number of navigation links for that page.

Sometimes it is hard to have a site that works both well on your normal browser as it does on multiple mobile devices so detection of mobile and then delivering a totally different template is necessary. Most large sites usually take that approach because of the complexity of their design and navigation. Most often the mobile version don't have all the features that the main version of the site has but it works well as it is catering only to the mobile devices.

[jlego]

you have so many sub categories on your drop down menu that it would be easier just to detect mobile phone and display a different layout all together

make the sure the links are big , easy to hit with a finger, and everything is spaced out nicely. i hate going to a site on my phone and seeing everything all jammed together.

[maxelcat]

Yes - I would agree that ideally a new, mobi site would be the best bet - afterall mobi users aren't going to be interested in some of the "About us" type stuff. however, i do'nt think that's an option at the moment...

[jlego]

honestly, i think two versions would be great. the mobi site could be very easy and basic. couple touches and you are where you want to be. nothing to fancy or slow, and extremelly easy on a phone

then your normal site with the drop downs for dedicated pc users and so forth.

your site seems to have alot of information and areas, i doubt your client would want to give that all up to have a mobi site you know? like you said with the about us information

[maxelcat]

Well, we had a meeting with them last week and this subject of a mobi site came up. And we mostly agreed that it would be a good plan - less info and all that. A less cluttered site on a small screen would be a good option. The biggest issue is that they don't want to maintain two sites. Its a joomla site (surprise!) at present. I guess we could figure out a way to pull less content from the same database for a smaller site - would be an exciting project. I think in the meantime though a "Quick win" is needed. Thanks for your comments!