I have just tried to use the Umbraco admin panel on my phone and it is completely unusable. Buttons appear outside the screen and its impossible to scroll to them for some reason. Also the login screen was very difficult to reposition so that I could enter login.
I can't show that to a client. I see there is an app uMobile but that charges client 99euro. I also see Umbraco supports MetaWeblog API but there are no apps for this on android that actually work (havent tested iphone yet).
Every other CMS I have used has been usable from a mobile phone (some better than other admittedly, but they have been usable). Is there anyway that I can make umbraco admin usable from a mobile?
What phones have you tested on and what version? I tested on an iPhone 5 a year ago on v7.0.x and it seemed ok to me. It was a quick test though and things can have been changed since back then. But it's the aim that it should be a better experience on a phone than it was with previous versions but mainly tablets are the focus though.
There are no apps available on iPhone to manage content in Umbraco. The MetaWeblog API has primarily been used for making it possible for editors to edit content using word for instance but I don't now if anyone is actually using this.
I used My Samsung Galaxy S4 and the latest release. It was unusable. I will try to get an iPhone to test it.
My client at the moment doesnt even own a computer, they do all their internet from their phone. These days I am seeing this more and more. A lot of people dont want to be tied down at a desk, they want to be on the go and be able to do things like take a picture or video on their mobile and upload it to their website or view leads/orders etc.. Wordpress, blogger, squarespace etc.. are pushing in on small business market and they have a very smooth mobile user experience that has set the standards in the clients eye.
Of course using umbraco you have more freedom & control but it is hard to convey that to the end user who just wants a nice streamlined user experience and doesnt understand why a guy building in wordpress can have it and in umbraco can not.
long term I really want to get behind umbraco as architecture is something I struggle with and umbraco give me a great structure to work from. I checked your roadmap and couldnt see anything regarding mobile admin.
Right now the only solution I can see is to create my own seperate administration system using the management api. Some features will be unavailable but it seems like updating content and managing members is all possible. It's more work than I want to do to be honest but from reading the forum the admin panel seems like something that everyone advises not to mess with.
First of all I would like to stress that I'm just a nice guy who is part of this big community and I'm an Umbraco fanboy and I love to help people out but I'm not working at the Umbraco HQ on a daily basis currently :)
I think you have some very valid points and I know that HQ are interested in making this experience creating content from other devices than a desktop as seamless as possible. Currently Umbraco 7 is working really well on tablets. But I think it might be a good idea to file this as a bug/feature request on the issue tracker at http://issues.umbraco.org/issues so HQ can be notified about the issue. Perhaps writing more details about what is not working properly and perhaps add some screendumps if possible.
I think it's good that you raise your voice about this and I agree that it should be a good experience creating simple content on the phone or whatever device you fancy. And the scenarios where people don't own a desktop computer is getting more and more common these days indeed.
But yes for now it might be your best option to create something based on the API instead.
Currently Umbraco 7 is only optimized for desktop and tablet (mainly on iPad and similar newer tablets I think). I am not sure how well the Umbraco 7 backoffice will work with a responsive design for phone sizes (mostly from 320px to 480px in width I guess), when you use a smartphone like e.g. an iPhone og one in Samsung Galaxy serie.
I haven't had a client that need to edit content from mobile devices, but you could try with this package + the app: https://our.umbraco.org/projects/backoffice-extensions/umobile (remember to make a backup just in case it brokes something). I looks like it has been developed for Umbraco 7.0.x too, but I haven't tested if it works with Umbraco 7.1.x and 7.2.x
Unfortunately uMobile doesn't have client app available yet, just the admin and when it is available it will cost 99eur per site. I can see value in that if it streamlines the experience by removing the overhead of UI loading via the web but surely the admin panel should be usable from a mobile?
I can't remember the last time I was unable to use a site from my mobile. Sometimes they are awkward to use as they have no media queries but you can use them awkwardly by scrolling left or right or zooming out. It seems like the problem with the Umbraco admin panel is that it is using bootstrap to make it load on tablets and this code is messing with mobiles. I only had a quick glance at the code as I haven't used LESS yet and really don't want to get involved with modifying the core.
I tried requesting the site as desktop site in mobile browser which seems to stop it freezing so much but touch events are still enabled so it is impossible to be able to scroll to the buttons you need like "save".
My whole sales schtick revolves around getting the customer to update their site because it is not mobile friendly and in 2015 phones are what people use for internet access. How does it then look if the site I provide them is not usable on a mobile? Especially when wordpress, blogger, squarespace, wix etc etc etc have really slick mobile admin experiences at no extra cost. At the very least it will be a bit embarrassing and awkward, at worst it opens the door for a rival agency to undermine my choices and lose me business.
The vibe I am getting is that this isn't on the dev teams radar but I think it should be as I think updating the admin panels CSS to work with mobiles makes more sense than me making my own admin pages from scratch and maintaining them separately.
A lot of the businesses I work with are one man bands where they are rarely in an office and their life revolves around their mobile phone. I am surprised this isn't a bigger issue for people but perhaps Umbraco devs are not working so much with small businesses as that market is dominated by wordpress. I really dislike PHP so I will most likely create my own mobile admin before I jump ship to wordpress.
Is there anyway to get a definite yes or no as to whether the admin panel will be updated for mobiles?
Yes, uMobile is a native app and not a webapp, so you can only use it to access Umbraco via the app and not through the web browser. It seems to be free to use, but with some limitation e.g. if you want to customize the functionality http://www.umobileapp.com/#table
The website - the frontend part is fully customizable and as a designer/developer you can of course build a responsive website that is optimized for mobile and what it needs in year 2015. The backoffice/admin interface is not optimized for mobile phones, but you can always create a feature request for that here: http://issues.umbraco.org/
The problem with Umbraco 7 backoffice is not that it use Bootstrap - the Umbraco HQ just haven't focused much on spending time to optimize it for mobile phones yet, because I believe that it is a small part of all editors that actually need to edit their website content from a mobile devices and because there are a lot of other improvements done by the Umbraco HQ among others the new Grid property editor.
So the backoffice won't look good on mobile devices as it is now and need some work, but I think it is more important that is works well on tablets.
Your website is usable on a mobile if you build and optimize it for mobile phones - just not the backoffice. Mostly - for smaller companies - they have a few editor users, but is different from company to company. Still is you in some CMS edit content from a mobile device I think it would be more time consuming than from a tablet or from desktop.
WordPress is a lot bigger CMS than Umbraco and Blogger is owned by Google. Umbraco is a quite small company and much of the cool stuff in Umbraco or extended possibilities with Umbraco (packages) is actually developed by the community and much of this is free of charge.
But this is a open discussion, so if there is a need to optimize the backoffice for mobile nothing prevents people to start contributing and help Umbraco HQ with optimization of the backoffice to mobile devices. Just small part like this login screen for Umbraco 7 backoffice would be a start and maybe others will start joining you.
Umbraco 7 Mobile Admin
I have just tried to use the Umbraco admin panel on my phone and it is completely unusable. Buttons appear outside the screen and its impossible to scroll to them for some reason. Also the login screen was very difficult to reposition so that I could enter login.
I can't show that to a client. I see there is an app uMobile but that charges client 99euro. I also see Umbraco supports MetaWeblog API but there are no apps for this on android that actually work (havent tested iphone yet).
Every other CMS I have used has been usable from a mobile phone (some better than other admittedly, but they have been usable). Is there anyway that I can make umbraco admin usable from a mobile?
Hi Mike
What phones have you tested on and what version? I tested on an iPhone 5 a year ago on v7.0.x and it seemed ok to me. It was a quick test though and things can have been changed since back then. But it's the aim that it should be a better experience on a phone than it was with previous versions but mainly tablets are the focus though.
There are no apps available on iPhone to manage content in Umbraco. The MetaWeblog API has primarily been used for making it possible for editors to edit content using word for instance but I don't now if anyone is actually using this.
/Jan
Hi Jan,
I used My Samsung Galaxy S4 and the latest release. It was unusable. I will try to get an iPhone to test it.
My client at the moment doesnt even own a computer, they do all their internet from their phone. These days I am seeing this more and more. A lot of people dont want to be tied down at a desk, they want to be on the go and be able to do things like take a picture or video on their mobile and upload it to their website or view leads/orders etc.. Wordpress, blogger, squarespace etc.. are pushing in on small business market and they have a very smooth mobile user experience that has set the standards in the clients eye.
Of course using umbraco you have more freedom & control but it is hard to convey that to the end user who just wants a nice streamlined user experience and doesnt understand why a guy building in wordpress can have it and in umbraco can not.
long term I really want to get behind umbraco as architecture is something I struggle with and umbraco give me a great structure to work from. I checked your roadmap and couldnt see anything regarding mobile admin.
Right now the only solution I can see is to create my own seperate administration system using the management api. Some features will be unavailable but it seems like updating content and managing members is all possible. It's more work than I want to do to be honest but from reading the forum the admin panel seems like something that everyone advises not to mess with.
Hi Mike
First of all I would like to stress that I'm just a nice guy who is part of this big community and I'm an Umbraco fanboy and I love to help people out but I'm not working at the Umbraco HQ on a daily basis currently :)
I think you have some very valid points and I know that HQ are interested in making this experience creating content from other devices than a desktop as seamless as possible. Currently Umbraco 7 is working really well on tablets. But I think it might be a good idea to file this as a bug/feature request on the issue tracker at http://issues.umbraco.org/issues so HQ can be notified about the issue. Perhaps writing more details about what is not working properly and perhaps add some screendumps if possible.
I think it's good that you raise your voice about this and I agree that it should be a good experience creating simple content on the phone or whatever device you fancy. And the scenarios where people don't own a desktop computer is getting more and more common these days indeed.
But yes for now it might be your best option to create something based on the API instead.
/Jan
Hi Mike
Currently Umbraco 7 is only optimized for desktop and tablet (mainly on iPad and similar newer tablets I think). I am not sure how well the Umbraco 7 backoffice will work with a responsive design for phone sizes (mostly from 320px to 480px in width I guess), when you use a smartphone like e.g. an iPhone og one in Samsung Galaxy serie.
I haven't had a client that need to edit content from mobile devices, but you could try with this package + the app: https://our.umbraco.org/projects/backoffice-extensions/umobile (remember to make a backup just in case it brokes something). I looks like it has been developed for Umbraco 7.0.x too, but I haven't tested if it works with Umbraco 7.1.x and 7.2.x
/Bjarne
Unfortunately uMobile doesn't have client app available yet, just the admin and when it is available it will cost 99eur per site. I can see value in that if it streamlines the experience by removing the overhead of UI loading via the web but surely the admin panel should be usable from a mobile?
I can't remember the last time I was unable to use a site from my mobile. Sometimes they are awkward to use as they have no media queries but you can use them awkwardly by scrolling left or right or zooming out. It seems like the problem with the Umbraco admin panel is that it is using bootstrap to make it load on tablets and this code is messing with mobiles. I only had a quick glance at the code as I haven't used LESS yet and really don't want to get involved with modifying the core.
I tried requesting the site as desktop site in mobile browser which seems to stop it freezing so much but touch events are still enabled so it is impossible to be able to scroll to the buttons you need like "save".
My whole sales schtick revolves around getting the customer to update their site because it is not mobile friendly and in 2015 phones are what people use for internet access. How does it then look if the site I provide them is not usable on a mobile? Especially when wordpress, blogger, squarespace, wix etc etc etc have really slick mobile admin experiences at no extra cost. At the very least it will be a bit embarrassing and awkward, at worst it opens the door for a rival agency to undermine my choices and lose me business.
The vibe I am getting is that this isn't on the dev teams radar but I think it should be as I think updating the admin panels CSS to work with mobiles makes more sense than me making my own admin pages from scratch and maintaining them separately.
A lot of the businesses I work with are one man bands where they are rarely in an office and their life revolves around their mobile phone. I am surprised this isn't a bigger issue for people but perhaps Umbraco devs are not working so much with small businesses as that market is dominated by wordpress. I really dislike PHP so I will most likely create my own mobile admin before I jump ship to wordpress.
Is there anyway to get a definite yes or no as to whether the admin panel will be updated for mobiles?
Yes, uMobile is a native app and not a webapp, so you can only use it to access Umbraco via the app and not through the web browser. It seems to be free to use, but with some limitation e.g. if you want to customize the functionality http://www.umobileapp.com/#table
The website - the frontend part is fully customizable and as a designer/developer you can of course build a responsive website that is optimized for mobile and what it needs in year 2015. The backoffice/admin interface is not optimized for mobile phones, but you can always create a feature request for that here: http://issues.umbraco.org/
The problem with Umbraco 7 backoffice is not that it use Bootstrap - the Umbraco HQ just haven't focused much on spending time to optimize it for mobile phones yet, because I believe that it is a small part of all editors that actually need to edit their website content from a mobile devices and because there are a lot of other improvements done by the Umbraco HQ among others the new Grid property editor.
So the backoffice won't look good on mobile devices as it is now and need some work, but I think it is more important that is works well on tablets.
Your website is usable on a mobile if you build and optimize it for mobile phones - just not the backoffice. Mostly - for smaller companies - they have a few editor users, but is different from company to company. Still is you in some CMS edit content from a mobile device I think it would be more time consuming than from a tablet or from desktop.
WordPress is a lot bigger CMS than Umbraco and Blogger is owned by Google. Umbraco is a quite small company and much of the cool stuff in Umbraco or extended possibilities with Umbraco (packages) is actually developed by the community and much of this is free of charge.
But this is a open discussion, so if there is a need to optimize the backoffice for mobile nothing prevents people to start contributing and help Umbraco HQ with optimization of the backoffice to mobile devices. Just small part like this login screen for Umbraco 7 backoffice would be a start and maybe others will start joining you.
/Bjarne
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