Greetings Everyone! I hope you're all doing well!

I was unaware until recently that there was no mobile browsing option available to the community.

Today I am excited to unveil a working demo of a mobile browser for Bitcointalk that I have created



Man that is a pretty sweet logo if I may say so myself! I made that back in 2019 for the 10th anniversary art contest.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5193860.msg52795174#msg52795174

My other contribution for the contest was the Bitcointalk 10th Anniversary Dash HTML5 game!!!
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5193860.msg53144771#msg53144771

Now that you're a little more familiar with some of my work, let's check out my latest and greatest!

The Bitcointalk Mobile Browser!

As you see above it's a simple interface, a drop down menu of forum sections, an input box where
you can view the current forum section / or enter a new one manually and tap the GO button.

Page back and foward controls are represented as double arrows <<   >> and the current page number is shown (p.1)

In the second image you see I have selected Goods from the drop down menu and pressed the Go button to access the Goods section of the forum.

Above, starting at the top left, each topic begins with it's designated icons, followed by the subject of the topic in bold.
The next line we see the user who started the topic, followed by the ( number of replies, and ( number of views).
The next line shows the last reply, timestamp, and poster.


Here we see how a quote in presented in the mobile browser



And how a block of code is presented in the mobile browser


 
I have invested a lot of time to ensure there are no issues, but this should still be considered a BETA demo.
I have also created two demo sites, just in case! Try them both and see which is faster for you.




Links:

Main: https://bt.coolstorage.org

Mirror: https://bt.irlbtc.com



How it works:

No APP required, use your standard mobile web browser.

The CoolStorage server requests the Bitcointalk servers page as a guest user.

The page content is then strategically parsed, reformatted to fit the mobile theme, and is then displayed.

In most cases, the OP of each topic can be read in reader format as well as standard format, you
should see a "reader view available" notice in the url bar when it is available!

When reading a topic, user quotes and code snippets are presented in a different background
color to easily differentiate between users comments, blocks of code, and replies.

Each page that is viewed is cached for a duration of 60 seconds for performance purposes.
This ensures the Bitcointalk server is not being queried with identical requests.
The caching system can help lower server load over time as well.


Known issues: Certain links will lead to an empty page because the web app will only accepts numeric data to locate the boards or topics in query.
When viewing a topic, the # links to access specific posts within that topic do not work. The All posts option also does not work.


This demo is my "Proof of Work" so to speak, to show that even though I do not have access to the
Bitcointalk source, with my skills, I am still able to create an effective mobile browsing experience.

If I can do this without direct access, imagine what I can do with the user interface directly!

Observations:

This is an iconic forum and providing a theme that is pleasant to use on mobile devices is important.

I am sure there is already work being done in some capacity to accomplish this goal, either through
new forum updates or other options. I am definitely not trying to step on anyone's toes here.

I simply discovered a problem and have developed a solution.

The forum in it's current state performs excellent, I would go as far as to say that it would be foolish
to change any source code at this point other than purely cosmetic updates to the user interface.

Proposal:

I would like to propose that I create two new themes for the community.
I have the skills to get this job done right and will take great pride in doing so!
It would be an honor for me to have this iconic website listed in my portfolio of work.
By using an empty install of the same forum version, I can create a mobile and updated standard theme for the forum
that can be placed without editing any of the forum source code and without any downtime or compatibility issues.
(This is assuming the forum software has the option to offer user selection of different themes)

The community could then select between the classic, new standard, or new mobile themes.

Alternatively the mobile browser could be further enhanced and CoolStorage can continue to host it or it could be set up on it's
own subdomain like m.bitcointalk.org to be a stand alone mobile browsing solution for the community,
It could also be integrated directly, and with some more work, would function just like the original forum.

I could make the app only browse board sections and when a topic is selected to be viewed the browser
will be directed to the forum page instead of the mobile app view. Doing this would allow users to be
signed in on the forum while still using the mobile app to navigate the forum sections.

Lots of possibilities! Please let me know if you have any questions or issues! Thank you!


Am I hired?