Our reduced mobile websites

All of us most likely met horrible mobile versions of websites, and as if I didn’t want to stir up the topic of developing these websites, today I want to tell you about the perception of mobile websites in general.

“So historically” considered mobile versions to be curtailed. So it really was, even with the arrival of full browsers in mobile phones. But a lot of time has passed and it is time to reconsider the attitude towards mobile websites.

This problem concerns Russia more than America, for example. In our country, this entered the language and became something of a well-established expression - “Full version,” people say about desktop websites, themselves without noticing it. I said so for a long time, but at some point, when I switched the language of my phone back to Russian, I became aware of the whole situation.
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This is how it looked in English and Russian in Google Chrome. Do you notice the difference? The English version says “Desktop site” (“Website for desktop”), and in the Russian version “Full version”. Interesting, isn't it? I was very hooked. It turns out that a priori mobile version of the website is “incomplete” and each time this menu does not allow users to forget that they are using something curtailed and incomplete, which means that such a thing is excusable to be poorly done, to lag and not have any features .

It really may seem like a trifle, just think, some sort of item in some menu. But it's not just the browser menu items, on many websites where there is a mobile and desktop version, it says “View full version” or its derivatives.



Now a very large part of the traffic, and maybe more, depending on the product, comes from mobile devices. Tens of millions of users. Young people very often begin their acquaintance with the Internet through mobile devices, rather than through computers as they used to be, and all they see on the Russian web is “Request the full version”, “Full version”, “Open full version”, and t .d ... This is part of their daily use of speech, it becomes normal and becomes stronger in the head. Initially, because they do not know whether this is a full version or incomplete, what it can do and what can be done on a computer. But everything says - “Hey, pss, this is an incomplete version. We have the full version, but this is not it. So it goes".

Need to fix

First of all, I suggested making a change to VKontakte, but at the same time I started a bug for Google Chrome, because if Chrome changes, then everyone else will be much easier to convince. VC was treated with understanding and now the wording “Computer version” is used on the entire mobile site. With Chrome it turned out to be more difficult, the bug got into feature requests, and this, as we know, for a long time. But thanks to the guys from Google DevRel and the PWA Russian-speaking community (join ;-)) for the help. Contacting the localization team directly helped speed up the process and now “PC Version” is already in the stable release of Chrome on Android and iOS.



I also started a bug for Firefox and in the next release the wording will change to “PC version”.

Unfortunately, Safari has a bug tracker closed and I can’t give you a link, but the guys promised to “sort out the problem”. I hope for the next release of iOS Safari, they will understand ;-)

With Yandex Browser everything turned out to be more interesting. In addition to the poor wording “Full version of the site” in Russian, a spoiled phone happened and was translated into English as “Go to full site”. English usually uses the “Desktop site” or derivatives. So in all browsers and websites where there is a similar button. “Full site” is a crutch of the Russian language, which was transferred back to English.



By a strange coincidence, at the time of writing this article I was contacted from a mobile Yandex Browser, a completely different matter. Naturally, I did not miss the chance and the guys promised to tackle this problem. Thank!

The only browser I checked that didn’t use the “Full version” was Samsung Internet, the “PC version” was used and used there. Thank you, well done!

Total

I hope that now the trend will change and new and not mentioned browsers themselves will begin to be corrected. I do not hope that the “Full version” will soon disappear from the use of current users, since for many this phrase has already become quite strongly established in the consciousness. But I hope that the new generation will avoid this and stop treating the mobile web as something inferior. It is sad when the perception of such things is inherent in the language itself.

I hope that the developers will begin to change their attitude. Many people really do not understand why this is necessary and do not see problems in the formulation “Full version”. As long as this attitude remains in our heads, mobile websites will indeed remain trimmed and lagging versions, but let's change that.