LJ -- the least phone-friendly of the networks?

[jducoeur]

There -- I think I *finally* have things set up so that I can read my LJ flist from my Droid. That was way harder than it should have been.

Most of the social networks have dedicated software for the major mobile platforms, or at least excellent sites. The Facebook app for Android is stellar, and ships with the phone. There are a host of decent Twitter clients (I'm currently using Twidroid), and even Buzz has a web version that is tailored specifically for phones.

LJ, OTOH, has a simplistic mobile interface, m.livejournal.com. Used naively, it has a glaring weakness: you can't use friend filters for reading on it. That makes it essentially useless for me, since I *always* read using filters. I've got all kinds of people and feeds on my full flist, including a bunch that I follow rarely if at all. For actual reading, I use one of the filters -- ranging from "Daily Reading" if I'm caught up, or "Critical High-Priority" (which mostly consists of close friends who I particularly care about not missing posts from) if not. If I have *gobs* of time, I'll use one of the optional-reading lists, but that's really pretty rare.

Anyway, after far too much digging around in the LJ FAQ, I finally found the right incantation. It turns out that, if you create a special friend list titled "Mobile View", that defines the friends that will show up in the mobile app. Not ideal from my POV -- it's duplicating data, and I'd rather have access to my standard filters -- but at least LJ is now on an even footing with Facebook and Twitter (both of which I am following *far* more regularly on my phone than I ever did on the desktop)...

Comments

[tpau]

there are no 3rd party clients?

[jducoeur]

Several for posting (although none yet get fabulous reviews) but none for reading that I've come across yet. LJ is actually pretty hostile to client readers: it favors reading directly via the web instead. I haven't yet come across a desktop LJ reader.

Indeed, until quite recently I had thought it near-impossible to build a 3rd party reader, because there isn't a publicly-documented API for it. This is what the thread a couple of weeks ago was about: DreamWidth added capabilities that needed such an API, and in the course of that discussion it came up that they were using an ill-documented call that they are making more usable.

So it sounds like a 3rd-party client app *may* be possible (and the DW folks were gently encouraging me to write one), but how well it would work for LJ remains to be seen. From the little I know of the protocol, it does sound like it would be limited in its functionality...

[tpau]

oh there a rea bunch of desktop readers i used to sue them.. they all come from russia...

[tpau]

any of thes emake sense? http://www.livejournal.com/download/?platform=Handhelds not sure if Droid is too new or what

[jducoeur]

Again, they're all posting clients (far as I can tell), not readers...

[tpau]

hmm yeah ok. semagic is what i used to both read and post but that was windows

[jducoeur]

*Blink*. How do you read via Semagic? I use it all the time, but I don't see any reading capabilities in it...

[ckd]

I'd be interested in knowing how my LJ's style looks on the Droid browser; I've done some CSS tweaks for Mobile Safari, but I don't know if those translate to other WebKit-based mobile browsers.

[jducoeur]

At a quick side-by-side comparison, it looks fine. Slight differences from what I see here in desktop Firefox (in particular, FF shows a serif font where Droid shows sans-serif), but pretty much identical except for those minor details. Actually renders pretty well on the Droid's screen...

[ckd]

Thanks! Sounds like the tweaks aren't too Safari-specific then. (Basically, all I'm doing is setting the viewport and scaling graphics so userpics don't look so gigantic.) I should clean it up, document it, and post something about it in my Copious Free Time.

[metageek.livejournal.com]

LJ, OTOH, has a simplistic mobile interface, m.livejournal.com. Used naively, it has a glaring weakness: you can't use friend filters for reading on it.

From my point of view, it has a worse weakness: it uses really tiny text, which I have to squint at. (For some reason, neither Nokia's own browser for S60 nor Opera Mobile includes zoom capabilities. The volume control keys keep taunting me.)

[jducoeur]

Yeah, I definitely agree. It's not as bad on the Droid, since the zooming works okay, but it would be nice if the default font wasn't eyestrain-inducing...