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!
October 9th, 2008 at 7:30 am
I’ve just spotted the ability to hide the top menu bar.
This works perfectly, and it even gets rid of the search bar which I never used.
Excellent work team.
Now, for a question, why does the top area appear in a striped colour, or is this another IE “feature”?
October 11th, 2008 at 4:58 am
@Simon: Yeah, the compact top area is cool, isn\’t it? They\’ve done that very well.
I think the striped color top area is indeed an IE “feature”. In Chrome and Firefox, that area is like an overlay with very high (90%+) transparency setting. I’m guessing IE doesn’t handle transparencies that well.
October 11th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
I just created a new protopage account. I wanted to make a classroom website using protopage. After I update it and make my changes I log out. But after I log out, then you can’t see my protopage. You can only see it when I log out. So the public cannot see the protopage unless they are logged in? I was pretty sure that they can see it even when it’s logged out. I know they can’t make changes but I thought they could look at the contents on my protopage. This is my account:
www.protopage.com/msmalik
Please let me know what I’m doing wrong. There is no point in creating a protopage when no one can see it unless you are logged on. I don’t want to be logged on for the public to see it because then they can change it without me knowing.
Please help!
October 11th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
@Sohnia: When I view my own protopage (nothing special, look at www.protopage.com/freebee), I don\\\’t need to be logged in.
I think you made your pages in the private category in stead of the public category. The private category is visible only to the people who can log in to it, but the public category normally also shows if you\\\’re not logged in.
So please check in your top area, in which category your pages are put. It should be easy to move them to a different group and make them visible to the public.
I hope this helps, good luck!
October 11th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
Thank you soooooooo much!
That helped a lot!
October 17th, 2008 at 11:38 pm
@Protopage Team
Umm… This is not good. Since you took the decision to hide the top menu bar, when I connect via another PC there appears to be no way of signing in. This is not good. I have tried with IE8b2, IE7, FF3 and GC.
So, if someone blitzs your cookies, and you have hidden the “settings” bar, there is no way to sign back in. :-(
@Freebee
Thanks for the reply. I’ve tried GC and FF3 and still both show the top are as striped. I’m not quite sure what you mean by 90% transparency setting. At first I though you meant they had tried to mimic Vista Aero (glass? I haven’t and don’t intend to adopt Vista), but it doesn’t appear that way to me.
October 18th, 2008 at 12:49 am
@Simon
Well, if it still appears striped to you, even in other browsers, then it must not be an IE feature after all. What I meant with the transparency thing is: it just looks like a sort of glassy overlay like a HUD. I don’t know about Vista Aero nor do I recall having set anything to get this transparent effect.
Sorry I couldn’t be of more help.
November 12th, 2008 at 11:22 am
What is that new white box on top of the page? There’s just a close button, but no text. I can’t write anything inside either.
November 12th, 2008 at 9:38 pm
For me that box contained some commercial. I was sure that kind of stuff would never happen here, but maybe the Protopage Team has rethought their strategy.
And since several weeks have passed since my last question, without them responding… perhaps this stuff is going down the drain altogether… Would be a big loss for us :(
November 13th, 2008 at 12:56 am
Please help…all of a sudden my login button has disappeared from the top of my protopage???
I have tried it in IE 7, FF 3, GC and Safari for windows…
Any idea what is going on?
thanks
frank
November 13th, 2008 at 9:16 pm
FreeBee, don’t panic! Everything is good at Protopage.
Frank - the problem is most probably that you enabled the new “Compact top area of your page” option from the Settings tab.
This hides all the buttons, including the login button, until you click the double down-arrow button in the top right of the page. Hope this helps!
November 14th, 2008 at 3:33 am
Wow, The Team is alive! That’s mighty good to hear… You really had me worrying a little there.
So I hope you’re checking out the problem with the previews in GC? Thanks in advance!
Yikes! I know I’m one of the people who suggested an ID lock to block Blog-spamming some time ago, but I’m not happy about this particular one! With every post, I have to retry several times because of invalid entries.
Best regards,
FreeBee
November 14th, 2008 at 9:57 am
Oh, now that there’s another small box on top telling me to pay to get rid of ads I understand what that blank box to the left is supposed to be. It really makes no sense when Adblock is installed.
Too bad, of all the start pages, Protopage was the one that appealed to me the most, but I guess I’m going to check out the other ones now in hope they don’t have banners.
November 14th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
@Asdf:
Now that’s weird. Just click the little “x” in either of the boxes, and you won’t see any more commercials for the entire session. Why would you leave, just because you have to click once?
November 14th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
You mean “…because you have to click everytime you visit the page”.
November 15th, 2008 at 1:13 am
@Asdf:
What? You didn’t even install Greasemonkey and design a script to get rid of the banner? Yeah, one click per visit. So what? Ever tried to get rid of the “Nike” banners people wear on their clothes everyhere? Never asked for those, but no matter how hard I click, I can’t rid myself of them…
At least with Protopage I know they’re listening to their users. You don’t get that everywhere!
November 15th, 2008 at 8:36 am
Your comparison is a complete failure. If you don’t ask for the Nike logo, then don’t buy clothes from that company. Most people who want to buy Nike clothes do it BECAUSE they want something from that brand and don’t mind it having a huge logo on it.
I don’t use Protopage to watch banner ads and because I don’t want to, I’ll check for other websites.
November 15th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
@Asdf: I mean the Nike logo on OTHER people’s clothing… *I* don’t buy such stuff, but I have to look at it on others… I didn’t ask for that!
So there’s nothing wrong with my comparison!
Anyway, now I’m off topic. So I end this ‘discussion’.
November 16th, 2008 at 11:42 am
I have to say, these adverts couldn’t be more annoying. Let me explain.
Firstly, the page was redesigned so the config buttons (settings, add widgets, log on/off etc) appear at the top of the page. This upset a number of users (see previous comments elsewhere), as it messes up the layout of peoples’ pages. The Protopage team responded by giving users the option of hiding the buttons, but it doesn’t work properly, if you switch between another row of tabs, the config buttons forget to hide.
Secondly, adverts have been introduced, which appear in the most inconvenient position on the page - again messing up the layout. What is worse, visitors to you public tabs are also pestered by these adverts. The whole thing now looks unprofessional.
Thirdly, this makes the whole point of mobile Protopage flawed. A mobile user doesn’t keep a session open, so will be persistently pestered by the ads. Also, a mobile user will end up paying for the ad data to be downloaded every time, and when mobile tariffs charge by the data rate, its not fun.
I appreciate that one click will close the ads, but for me it is the positioning that has totally ruined the whole Protopage experience.
The ads also fail to achieve the purpose they were designed for. Presumably Protopage get money for each ad displayed or clicked on? Well, as I have ad blocking software installed, all I see is a blank white box. The ad is never downloaded. So for Protopage the revenue stream fails. All it manages to achieve is frustration. Perhaps the Protopage team like frustrating loyal users?
I don’t have a problem with adverts, but I think they could have been implemented better, some suggestions are below.
- Upon first visit to Protopage, an advert appears over the top of the page until it is manually closed.
- The config buttons are moved back to the bottom left corner and remain on top of all widgets (like they used to) and to the right of them, a floating non-closeable ad sits alongside the config buttons, the ads can stretch infinitely to the right, as required.
- A non removable ad-widget appears on every Protopage (every tab), below all other widgets. The ad-widget can be of any size, and any position below all user added widgets.
- Following on from the ad-widget theme, if a user chooses to have more ad-widgets on their page, say 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6, then the ad-widgets are reduced in size.
November 17th, 2008 at 3:48 am
@Simon: Well argumented criticism and constructive suggestions… FreeBee likes! I hadn’t been looking at it from that angle… maybe because I don’t mobile.
There’s only one thing an advertiser might bring to bear here: if the ad is at the bottom, or in any other way out of the user’s way, then who guarantees it will ever be seen? After all, that is the point of advertising: being seen! (Darn, what am I, the Devil’s advocate?)
November 17th, 2008 at 7:30 am
@FreeBee: Thanks for your reply and comments.
I don’t use Protopage mobile either. But I know for mobile users (from experience) it can be an issue. Of course the alternative is to pay Protopage to have the ads removed. However, at $2.49, I am assuming that they presume they will make a similar amount from each person by displaying the ads. If they make less, which I suspect they will due to the number of users installing ad-blockers, then they are just causing frustration.
I agree about the ad not being seen if it is a widget below all other widgets, but there are two points to this,
- Not all of my pages fill an entire screen with widgets, so some of my tabs will still allow the ads to be seen. Its also very unlikely I will rearrange my widgets just to hide the advert off the bottom of the page.
- Does it really matter if I see the ad or not? Although it is an irritation, I’m hardly likely to click on it, regardless of where it appears on the page, so again Protopage will not earn money from me. I also suspect this will be the case for a lot of other regular users.
January 27th, 2009 at 11:47 am
I’d like to see on protopage an import feature on bookmarks widget
February 3rd, 2009 at 5:13 pm
@Simon: that’s another set of valid points you make there, my friend. Pity I didn’t see this page earlier.
I *can* think of an alternative: Put the ads in a kind of sidebar. Either to the left, or to the right of the screen. That way, the advertisers can be happy, and we don’t have to scroll past the ads to get to our more important content :)
The drawback is: on mobiles, there is probably too little room to also allow for a sidebar.
No matter how you look at it, the matter is complicated. I wish I had a remedy… and the power to enforce it :)