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The Main HomePage as it appears on a featurephone and Blackberry browser

1.  Introducing Mobile Access

The Vistua Network offers editions of its site suited to mobile devices such as cell-phones, PDAs, Blackberries and smartphones.

The read-only mobile sites feature layouts and designs suitable for handsets with their limited processing power, small screens and slow connections. Good handset support is virtually universal.

The mobile site is generated directly from the content files of the actual vistua.com pages, the operation to produce the mobile content occurs on the server when a mobile browser requests a page, this means that

1. All content on the mobile site is 100% up-to-date with the non-mobile site
2. All page's URIs on the mobile site are identical to their regular URIs
3. Access to the mobile site is completely automatic; just visit www.vistua.com in your mobile browser.

2.  Why Two Mobile Sites?

The simple mobile version

The, more advanced, touchscreen version.

As you can see in the picture, there are two very different looking versions of the mobile site a simple one an a 'touch' one (touchscreen not actually required)

• The touch version is intended for the advanced browsers of true smartphones such as Android, the iPhone and the cross-platform Opera Mini browser.
• The 'simple' version is intended for feature phones which often sport extremely limited browsers and for low-iq pseudo-smartphones like Blackberries, Symbian, and antiques like Windows Mobile 6 and earlier. (The simple site is served to Windows Phone 7 because Microsoft has a long, distinguished history of browser quality issues and since we have not tested the touch site yet on that platform it's best to serve the simple site as it's guaranteed to work everywhere.)

3.  I have a Touch Screen Device but I am Getting the Basic Edition!

The server will not send the touch screen version to any featurephone, PocketPC or Blackberry with a touchscreen as these devices typically do not have good enough browsers to handle the touch site. If would like to try anyway, you can switch to the touch edition by following the instructions below.

4.  Switching Site Versions

Service of the mobile site is automatic, our server detects that you have a mobile browser and sends mobile formatted pages instead of regularly formatted pages. Nevertheless, on the bottom of both the simple and touch mobile sites there are links to switch to the other versions in case we got it wrong.

Switch versions

If you want to switch to the mobile or touch browsers from the standard desktop site you must use the Page Control Panel.

5.  Demo with the Mobile Site in a Desktop Browser

Thanks to the fine folks at Opera Software, makers of the Opera Mini and Opera Mobile browsers, you can view our mobile site in a Java-applet based simulation of their browsers! (Java required.)

6.  What about Text Only Users?

Text only browser users may find that our simple mobile site is more suitably formatted for their browsers and can override the server's default behavior to show the mobile version at the Page Control Panel

7.  Mobile Groupware

It is possible to access Groupware Applications in your mobile browser! Just follow the links on the mobile homepage. Or, proceed directly to mail.vistua.com, calendar.vistua.com, etc.

7.1  Groupware for Smartphones

If you have an Android Smartphone, Blackberry or iPhone you may find it more convenient to download apps or configure your phone's native applications to work with our services. Please follow one of those links to see your options. Native apps and downloadable applications offer many additional features not offered by the web interface, for example Blackberries and Android phones can sync their contact-lists against groupware.

Windows Mobile 6 phones and PocketPCs may be configured with Activesync for contacts and calendar and IMAP for email with our services. Please consult administration for further instructions.

8.  Important Billing Information

The Vistua Network Organization & Groupware vendor do not charge for access to the mobile site, the mobile groupware sites or the Groupware through native or downloaded applications. Your carrier, however, will charge you for data. If you do not have a data plan these charges could be very high. We recommend that you get a data plan.

On some carriers, each email message that comes in or goes out through the phone's native messaging app is billed individually, on most carriers at the same rate as domestic text messages. Check your carrier's brochures/website for more information. Most carriers offer messaging "bundles" that significantly reduce this cost.

Categories: Mobile, Internet, Vistua