NEW: Mobile Social Share Buttons - Mobile Joomla! Module

Friday, 12 April 2013 00:00

Here's the latest addition to the Mobile Joomla! modules: JQuery-based Mobile Social Share Buttons module! This extension is available now for Mobile Joomla! premium users (Elegance, Pro, or Club users).

Why did we build it? Most social sharing plugins and modules are quite heavy and slow to load on high-latency mobile connections. We wanted to offer something better.

So we built a lean new module, based on the SocialCount jQuery plugin by Filament Group Lab. The new module uses two or three small HTTP requests to the server (particularly, 1 for CSS style, 1 for JavaScript, and 1 optional request for counts) instead of a lot of requests to APIs of social networks. This improves the loading time considerably.

The new Mobile Joomla! social share module displays social sharing buttons for Facebook, Twitter and Google+, and supports all Mobile Joomla! templates (including Elegance in AJAX mode).
The module features these advanced settings:

• Select which social network buttons to display
• Hide/display social network icons on the button
• Set button size: small, medium, or large
• Display share counts
• Use Like or Recommend action for Facebook
• Set Twitter share text
• Load jQuery library (can be disabled if your template or other extension loads it)

Download the Mobile Social Share Buttons module now!

Mobile Joomla! 1.2.5 and Mobile Joomla! Pro 1.2.7 released

Thursday, 21 March 2013 00:00

Hey all, today brings an update to Mobile Joomla! standard and Pro versions.

The latest releases fix two issues in Mobile Joomla's Extensions Manager:

• Incorrect functionality in desktop mode
• Incorrect functionality in the case of two modules with identical titles

In addition, this update fixes some issues with displaying of embedded large-width videos. Now they will be shrunk to the screen size and will not break site design.

As always, you can update to the new version from your administrative panel via Mobile Joomla! Remote Update feature, or by downloading Mobile Joomla! package and installing it from the back-end. Do not forget to backup your website before the upgrade!

Remember to subscribe our RSS feed, follow us on Twitter and like our Facebook page to keep on top of all latest Mobile Joomla! news.

Mobile Joomla! 1.2.4 and Mobile Joomla! Pro 1.2.6 released

Thursday, 28 February 2013 20:19

New updates! We've just released Mobile Joomla! 1.2.4 and Mobile Joomla! Pro 1.2.6.

These releases include two main changes:

1. Support of RTL languages. Now both mobile_smartphone and mobile_iphone templates support right-to-left websites. If you know a friend developing RTL websites, spread the news!

2. Improved Mobile Menu module.
Do you use a special mobile menu, or would like to create one? Then this change is for you. As you know, the recommended way to create a mobile menu is to create it from “aliases” to corresponding desktop items (as this allows to keep menu item aliases). But in this case such a menu cannot contains subitems, because Joomla! doesn’t display subitems of “alias”-type items. So, in this Mobile Joomla! release we changed the Mobile Menu module to process such cases and display subitems as expected.

Other fixes:

• Fixed incorrect functioning of Mobile Joomla's module manager with "Force as homepage" feature
• Updated AMDD database (now supports BlackBerry 10 devices!)
• Fixed ScientiaMobile plugin problem in Joomla 3.0

Server Upgrade Completed!

Tuesday, 26 February 2013 00:00

Hi all, over the past week we have been working to upgrade our server environment to manage our growing community (that's you!) better. Unfortunately, we encountered server issues in the beginning of last week when doing a software update. We faced problems due to MySQL update and our team needed to spend a good deal of last week working to restore our website stability.

We are happy to report that the issues seem to be resolved. Mobile Joomla! is now running on brand new hardware and updated server environment. We should be faster than ever, and this upgrade guarantees us the resources needed for further growth and allows us to focus on further improving our product this year.

In any case, if you happen to notice any issues with our website or your Mobile Joomla! user data, please contact us at /customersupport at mobilejoomla.com/ and we'll help you out.

We would like note that our service downtime last week should not have affected your mobile websites running Mobile Joomla!. Those parts of our product which have an online component, like the support ads module and Mobile Joomla! Pro online device database, have been designed to gracefully revert to offline mode in case of connection issues. Mobile Joomla! Pro especially includes caching and offline device database for this reason.

Apologies for the issues and the occasional inability to access your MJ account. Thanks for your support and understanding - we look forward to growing bigger and better with you this year!

Improved Mobile Joomla! Mobile Device Support And New Releases

Monday, 21 January 2013 15:07

Today brings us a bunch of new version releases to our major products! We have improved Mobile Joomla's mobile device support and are launching Mobile Joomla! 1.2.3, Mobile Joomla! Pro 1.2.5, and Mobile Joomla! Elegance Template 1.2.4.

As mentioned, most of changes are related to improved device detection. We now cover almost 16,000 device and bot profiles in the AMDD database, and over 23,000 in the Mobile Joomla! Pro remote database!

And as of today, our device databases include also other device categories in addition to phones, smartphones, and tablets! Mobile Joomla! processes them in following manner:

• Smart TVs are mapped to the usual desktop mode
• TV Game Consoles are mapped to the desktop mode too
• Portable Game Consoles are mapped to the smartphone mode

Please find below more detailed description of the changes for Mobile Joomla! and Elegance.

Mobile Joomla! Standard and Pro

• The AMDD plugin is updated with improved support of Windows Phone 8, game consoles, Smart TVs, and many other devices
• Improved screen size detection in “databaseless” Mobile-Simple plugin
• Updated Remote Device Database RDDB API (MJ Pro)
• ScientiaMobile plugin is updated to the latest ScientiaMobile API (MJ Standard only)

Mobile Joomla! Elegance Template

• Fixed display problems with Windows Phone 8
• Updated add-to-homescreen feature to the latest version
• Added support for iPad Retina webapp icon (144x144 px)
• Included samples of iPad icons (72x72 and 144x144 px)
• Added support for additional webapp startup images:
• 640x920 iPhone retina
• 640x1096 iPhone 5
• 768x1004 iPad portrait
• 1024x748 iPad landscape
• 1536x2008 iPad retina portrait
• 2048x1496 iPad retina landscape

Go and download the latest versions of Mobile Joomla! and Mobile Joomla! Pro, and Mobile Joomla! Elegance Template now!

As normal, please take a backup before upgrading to the new versions.

Mobile Joomla! 2012 In Retrospect And Outlook For 2013

Monday, 07 January 2013 00:00

Hey all, we hope you've had a great start into 2013 so far! Last year was awesome for us - we couldn't be happier with the progress we made. We launched several new products, including Elegance Mobile Joomla! template, Kunena Mobile Extension, JComments Mobile extension, and of course Mobile Joomla! Pro and Club. Huge thanks to all of you over thousand premium users who have trusted us so far!

What's most important, our community has continued to grow amazingly fast! We want to thank you all for your feedback, both positive and constructive. It motivates us to keep on improving our products further.

Mobile Joomla! Highlights From 2012

• We released 11 version updates to the Mobile Joomla! standard version
• We released 8 version updates to the Mobile Joomla! Pro version
• We released 27 version updates to the Mobile Joomla! Elegance template
• We released 10 version updates to the Mobile Joomla! Kunena and JComments extensions
• We released Responsive Template Analyzer to test how much your responsive site could gain with Mobile Joomla! and RESS

Responsive Joomla!

In some arenas, the year 2013 has been claimed to be the year of responsive design. Responsive Joomla! templates are indeed growing in popularity and we are happy with the focus on mobile. However, as we stated before - for the sake of all your mobile visitors, optimizing responsive templates on server-side is an essential step. If you missed our Responsive vs. Server-side Mobile Solutions Infographic, check it out!

Otherwise, we're looking forward to Joomla! 3+ gaining wider adoption this year. The mobile-ready Boostrap features of Joomla! 3 combined with Mobile Joomla! server-side device detection and optimization will ensure your Joomla! 3 sites will rock on mobile like never before!

Finally, for the beginning of this year, we have two new product announcements.

Update To Remove Support Ads Module

As you know, to support the development, Mobile Joomla! displays unobstructive support ads, which has been made possible to remove with a free extension. For a long time, we have been receiving a lot of requests for a way to donate to Mobile Joomla! in exchange for using our Remove Support Ads extension. From the beginning of this year, we made the Remove Support Ads extension available for a reasonable, one time fee.
We understand many of our avid users get much more value than that from the Mobile Joomla! extension, but if you want to support us, you can always opt for our other paid products. Our Elegance template, as well as Pro and Club users continue to get the extension included as part of their subscriptions.

Mobile Joomla! Official Insider's Guide Ebook

This is an ebook we wanted to do for a long time, and we were finally able to release in December. With 120 pages, the ebook is a complete how-to manual for Mobile Joomla! and explores the details of all aspects of the extension, as well as tips and tricks for customizing and tweaking it for your needs. The Guide comes included with the Elegance template purchase, and in our Pro and Club subscriptions. Other Mobile Joomla! users can buy it here: Mobile Joomla! Official Insider's Guide

Special Offer!

We are offering a bundle of the Remove Support Ads module and the Official Insider's Guide ebook for a total price of $29.90 for a limited time! That's savings of $29.90 compared to the normal prices of the products. Get yours now!

That's all for now! We'll finish with a question: What would you like to see from us in 2013?

New Mobile Joomla! Updates

Wednesday, 19 December 2012 00:00

Ho ho ho! Santa's little elves have been busy at work. Today we are releasing updates to three Mobile Joomla! packages: Mobile Joomla! Standard 1.2.2, Mobile Joomla! Pro 1.2.4, and Mobile Joomla! Template Elegance 1.2.3. Below are the cumulative updates done since our last public version announcement:

Updates Common To Both MJ Standard And MJ Pro

• Fixed issue with pagination on mobile homepage
• Fixed possible warning in MJ's Extension Manager
• Fixed display of external images
• Reduced file size of rescaled jpeg images (by removing comment header)
• Updated the AMDD device database
• Fixed issue with caching (Joomla! 1.5)
• Fixed issue with mobile homepage in menu (Joomla !1.6+)

Mobile Joomla! Pro

• Fixed online device database issues with PHP 5.0 & 5.1

Mobile Joomla! Standard

• Support for ?device=auto parameter in URL (was introduced in MJPro 1.2.1)
• Fixed issue with empty list of menu items on MJ settings page

Elegance Mobile Joomla! Template

• Fixed hash processing in the case of disabled AJAX navigation
• Fixed unclosed [link] tags in Joomla!1.5
• Fixed height of external images

Enjoy the updates!

Responsive Design vs Server Side solutions (Infographic)

Monday, 03 December 2012 00:00

Today, responsive design is mostly implemented client-side: All assets are loaded independent of the browsing device. In practice, this is like going on a beach holiday and bringing your ski wear, winter jacket, and business attire with you - just in case. No wonder this often leads to wasted bandwidth, higher mobile bounce rates, lower time spent on the mobile site, and lower conversions on mobile commerce. Interestingly, this story even gets physical: 4% of users get so frustrated about sluggish mobile sites that they throw their devices on the wall!

Problem: Websites Are Growing Bigger All The Time

The websites are growing bigger all the time, the average webpage is now over 1.2MB according to HTTParchive.org. If the same trend continues, the average page will be over 2.4MB in 2014!

This fact, combined the trend of many people jumping into responsive design and responsive templates as the (often uneducated) mobile "solution" is going to cause rapidly increasing usability problems for the average mobile web visitor. We are not against responsive design as we have explained, but it has major delivery problems at the mobile side of things at the moment, and these won't be fully solved for the mass-market devices until a few years from now.

The top internet brands like Google, Facebook and Yahoo use server-side mobile solutions - quite simply, for the speed. It has been found out in studies that the average mobile user is only willing to wait a maximum of four seconds for content to load on their devices.

These trends are why we have teamed up with BraveNewCode, the provider of the hugely popular WPtouch plugin for Wordpress. Our teams together represent the two most popular mobile solutions in the open source community, and we want to raise discussion and awareness on this important topic.

Our joint best practice recommendation is that to optimize your mobile site delivery you should use server-side tools that have been shown to result in page sizes up to 500% smaller than their desktop counterparts, and load up to 400% faster than web pages not using a server-side mobile solution.

Infographic: Responsive Design Vs. Server-Side Solutions

Click on the thumbnail below to see full graph. Click the tweet button on top of this post to tweet it!

A few collected tweetable facts from the infographic:

Average webpage is now 1.2MB. If the trend continues, the avg page is >2MB in 2014! Tweet This stat!

10.3% of all web browsing is now done from smartphones and tablets. Tweet This stat!

4G/LTE network connections are 12% slower than desktop. Tweet This stat!

Mobile browsing latency can be up to 96% slower than desktop. Tweet This stat!

97% of mobile latency slowness happens on the device side. Tweet This stat!

64% of smartphone owners want mobile sites to load in <4s. Tweet This stat!

85% of mobile users expect mobile sites to load as fast as on desktop. Tweet This stat!

23% of frustrated mobile site visitors curse at their phones and 4% throw them. Tweet This stat!

Mobile Site Bounce Rate spikes by 100% when pages take over 4s to load. Tweet This stat!

Mobile Site Bounce Rate jumps by 150% when pages take over 8s to load. Tweet This stat!

Server-side tools could improve mobile performance of >55% of Joomla! sites. Tweet This stat!

Server-side tools could give ~30% of Joomla! sites >100% mobile performance boost. Tweet This stat!

Average WPtouch Pro pages load 75% faster than their desktop counterparts. Tweet This stat!

Copy the code below to embed this infographic into your web page:

What is your opinion on the topic? Let us know below in the comments!

You can find more assets in our Press folder should you wish to write about this topic and copy the infographic to your own website.

For more details on the topic, check our Whitepaper (PDF, 2MB): Server-Side Solutions Vs. Responsive Design