Protopage Mobile goes live
We’ve just launched a major update to Protopage, which includes brand new mobile features. Protopage Mobile has been specially optimized for dozens of mobile phones including the Apple iPhone, Blackberry, Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, LG, Windows Mobile 5/6, HTC and Palm.
To access it, simply visit protopage.com/mobile on your phone.
News feeds are automatically optimized for download speed and for your phone’s screen dimensions. Protopage Mobile works great on both 3G and older 2G phones. You can speed up access to news feeds even further by disabling images from the ‘Edit settings’ link at the bottom of the Protopage Mobile page.
You can use Protopage Mobile to read your news feeds, listen to your podcasts (requires a phone with a compatible media player), search the web, access your bookmarks, view your sticky notes, keep your to-do lists, view your photos and even check your calendar.
We’ve also been busy working on the web version of Protopage.
By popular demand, we now support column layouts that let you choose between 2,3,4 or 5 columns on your page. Uniquely, you can resize widgets to span multiple columns, which is useful for larger widgets and cartoon strips.
We’ve made a number of aesthetic and usability improvements, including an option for larger font sizes and simplifying the tab and toolbar system.
We’ve tested Protopage on a very broad set of phones, but please let us know if your particular model has any issues and we’ll see what we can do!
Please also let us know if you’ve spotted any bugs by using our feedback form. Thanks!
July 10th, 2008 at 2:24 am
Is there a way to move the Widgets/Mobile/Color/Settings tabs back to the bottom of the page? My whole page has been bumped down half an inch for items I will rarely use.
Also, all my links are underlined. Since everything on my page is a link, EVERYTHING is underlined. Is there an option to turn this off?
I liked the old layout much better. Can you create a “classic” option so I can switch back?
July 10th, 2008 at 2:49 am
Looking good - Thumbs up !
But please move the settings back to the bottom of the page ;)
July 10th, 2008 at 3:37 am
More and more space keeps getting eaten up with new updates, wasted space on the page. Rearranging suxx0rs.
July 10th, 2008 at 7:35 am
I agree about the Add/Settings/Help bar, it needs the option to move it back to the bottom.
Love the idea of PP Mobile though and will check that out as soon as I can.
Keep up the good work!
July 10th, 2008 at 9:53 am
Agree about the settings. Also the tag is no longer rendered as a horizontal line in link labels. Now prints the text . That was good for visually separating longer lists of links into groups (with a blank http:// as link) . Workaround could be to use underscores but not as good.
July 10th, 2008 at 9:55 am
by tag I meant HR Tag.
July 10th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
Hi protopeople,
congratz on the nem mobile version!! As soon I get my hands on a web-capable mobile, i’ll try it.
But I have a very important request: can you put an option to position the settings tab back to the bottom of the page?? Now on the top it’s wasting very precious space!! And some panels and widgets are opening under it, hidding the close button and making it hard to close…
And if it’s possible, it would be very fine to have the rounded borders back too… as an personalization option, of course. The angled borders are visually tiresome (it’s proved by usability studies).
Thanks you very much, and keep up the great job!
Clayton Jr
July 10th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
We’ve just released a new option in ‘Colors/Settings’ to allow you to have rounded corners again.
July 10th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
You guys are amazing! Everyone should try out protopage and see how great it is!!!
July 10th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
The underlining of links also seems to take up more screen space now compared to before, my RSS feeds nearly all have scroll bars which they didn’t have before….
Please can we have the underlining of links as an option… even if the default is to have the underline… and for those of us who know how to use Protopage we can at least turn that off…
Steve
July 11th, 2008 at 3:04 am
I agree with the other posts: this is the best start page on the web, but the settings tabs need to return to the bottom of the screen. Thanks.
July 11th, 2008 at 4:09 am
I agree with Craig who agrees with everyone else: This is the best start page out there. I also agree about the settings. They should move back to the bottom. Change is bad!!
July 11th, 2008 at 5:28 am
options bar at top = ruins my layout
please give us an option to hide/put back at bottom.
July 11th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
thanks for the updates. Love the mobile. I love the settings at the top, as it makes me thankful for having a huge screen.
July 12th, 2008 at 3:15 am
There’s a huge gap at the bottom of my Protopage where the old tabs were, but if I increase the size of the widgets, scrollbars appear. Isn’t there some setting you could increase so I can have my widgets nice and big and my page scrollbar-free? Merci.
July 12th, 2008 at 11:39 am
I have to agree with most comments on here.
The options bar along the top needs to go somewhere else, its obtrusive and takes up too much page space. How about having it appear when the mouse rolls over it, or appear when you click the double arrows to change tab category. Also the pointless search bar in the top right needs to go.
The background colour behind the tabs doesn’t match the rest of the page.
The news links are now underlined and take up a larger line meaning all my widgets need resizing, which I can’t do as the options along the top have taken up too much page space.
There is still a bug when a pop-up widget contains drop-down boxes, and they happen to occur over other widgets (and I’ve used the feedback a number of times to report it).
All in all, this update has brought little in the way of functionality and I would argue that it has caused headaches for most users - especially those long time fans. I don’t wish to knock the Protopage teams efforts, but I feel this release wasn’t properly tested and/or thought through very well.
July 12th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
As a Protopage user from the very beginning, I have always received excellent and prompt action when I have provided feedback.
We all agree that the option bar has to be moved, but would anyone else have noticed the new Mobile page if the intrusive button were not right there at the top of the page??? I’m using it on my mobile only because I saw it at the top of the page.
We pay Protopage nothing for the most customizable startpage on the Internet. Protopage has been my startpage since 2005. We all understand that you have to get the word out about new products and features. Make the “tabs at the top” the default for new users and let the rest of us put things where they belong… back at the bottom.
July 12th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
Thanks, Alvin. Simon et al have a good point about the top toolbar and the link underlining.
We didn’t quite realise how precious screen space was to many of you. Simon’s idea of an ‘expand’ option so that the page title, search box and toolbar buttons are normally hidden unless expanded we think is an excellent idea. We’ll implement this and put an option in the ‘Colors/Settings’ section to enable this shortly.
Simon - please could you elaborate on the ‘pop-up widget containing drop down boxes’ - we weren’t sure what you meant.
July 13th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Thanks for the reply Protopage team. I’m glad you like the suggestion about the hidden toolbar. I appreciate the efforts you make with the site, and hope I don’t come across as over-critical.
With regards to screen space, my personal preference is to “cram” as many useful widgets onto one page, without having to use the browser scroll bars to view it all. I then prefer to use the tabs to switch between different types of content.
Now, the problem with the pop-up widgets, this is really difficult to explain and I think it is best if I give you the link to my public page for you to work through it with.
- Browse to http://www.protopage.com/gatesofhell#Public/Weather_&_Webcams
- At the top of the page, hover over the Skipton Weather widget.
- You should now see a page from the Metoffice, showing the weather for Skipton. Do NOT make the window permanently visible, using the expand/coloapse control.
- On the left of the widget, below the map, you will see two drop down boxes (Region and Location).
- Click on one of the drop down boxes, a list of places will be shown.
- Note the location of the drop down boxes in relation to the other collapsed widgets on the page.
- Try moving the mouse over any of the items in the list.
- As you move the mouse, when it reaches a location that corresponds to one of the collapsed widgets behind, it causes the Skipton Weather widget to collapse, meaning that you can’t navigate the drop down list successfully.
I have tried this using IE7 and IE6 (on another PC), both running Windows XP. I can send screenshots if required.
July 13th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
hurray more change is coming, yayyyyyyyyyy!
July 14th, 2008 at 1:16 am
Simon, the ‘drop down list’ bug is a pretty rare problem that is specific to Internet Explorer and is something we’re unable to fix unfortunately.
Firefox however handles your particular situation perfectly (and is a faster browser than Internet Explorer too). You may want to consider switching.
August 29th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
couldn’t find other place to leave comment so here it is ;)
friendfeed has badges and i wanted to have one on my protopage.. it is just javascript which says document.write(blahblah).. it doesn’t work when places in rich text/html widget any other suggestion…
here is the badge embed code:
October 4th, 2008 at 9:25 pm
Again, as seems to happen every now and then, I have been away for a while. I can’t even say how long it was, nor do I have a good reason for staying away all that time. Anyway, I’m happy to see the ProtoTeam still rolling out new good stuff, and still listening to the users. You guys never cease to impress me.
Really happy to be back, I immediately feel at home on my startpage. Thank you ProtoTeam!