Comments on: iPhone Facelift

iPhone Facelift

pb — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 13:46:08 -0800

We updated the look of the standard site for iPhones today. We optimized fuelly.com for iPhones by taking away the left and right columns and adding an iPhone-style menu. Here's a look at a standard vehicle page: One thing to note is the new "skip to menu" link at the top-right of every page. If you click that, you'll jump to the bottom of the page where you'll find this menu: If you don't like the new iPhone-optimized look on your phone, you can click the "Switch to Standard Site" link and get back to the full web version. If you make the switch and want to get back to the iPhone-optimized site, you can click the new "Restore Mobile" link from the menu on the left side of the page. Right now this version is only available for iPhones, but we plan to create stylesheets for other mobile devices like the Android and Blackberry soon.

By: pb

pb — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 16:18:56 -0800

And the mobile version is live now for Android phones too.

By: badjokes

badjokes — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 10:26:43 -0800

what about palm pre and palm pixi?

webos is very popular and easy to develop for!

By: phyxius

phyxius — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 11:00:37 -0800

Cool... I'll be comparing this (I'm an android) against the new sms method. Any plans for an actual app?

By: pb

pb — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 13:55:07 -0800

badjokes, no immediate plans for a palm pre version. We just don't have that many visitors from Palm devices. Here's how our traffic breaks down once you get past Windows, Mac, and Linux:

iPhone 3.45%
Android 1.25%
iPod 0.43%
BlackBerry 0.37%
SymbianOS 0.11%
Samsung 0.05%
Playstation 3 0.04%
PalmOS 0.02%
Danger Hiptop 0.01%

So we'll probably tackle BlackBerry next, but honestly not too many visitors there either.

phyxius, If you just want to fuel-up on the Android, I'd still go with Fuelly Mobile at m.fuelly.com over the standard site.

No, no plans for an installed app. We're web guys so compiled apps aren't our area, and honestly there isn't much to gain from an installed app beyond offline fuel-ups and exposure in the various app stores. It's just not enough to justify hiring someone to build it.

By: dullgeek

dullgeek — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 13:31:40 -0800

pb, why not just detect the WebOS users and redirect them to the iPhone page? Alternatively can you create a URL that permits WebOS users to go there directly?

I presume that all you're doing is using different CSS for the iPhone. In which case, can you just make that available to other phones other than iPhone. Facebook does this by exposing the "touch.facebook.com" URL which works for iPhone, WebOS, Android, et al.

By: pb

pb — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 13:47:55 -0800

Sure, I could turn the iPhone stylesheet on for WebOS, but I need to confirm that it's not going to completely kill the site for Palm users before I do that. That means tracking down and installing an emulator because I don't own a Palm. So it's not impossible, just a bit of a project to get it running.

By: pb

pb — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 13:50:29 -0800

Oh, and make sure you check out Fuelly Mobile at m.fuelly.com on the Palm. It should work fine for adding fuel-ups.

By: dullgeek

dullgeek — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 13:57:23 -0800

Here's my suggestion: turn it on using a separate URL (touch.fuelly.com, x.fuelly.com, i.fuelly.com) and let those of us who are motivated provide feedback.

By: KamberB

KamberB — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 20:45:24 -0800

will there be an iPhone app that you are going to develop at all? I think that would be extramly useful and you will get a lot of hits on that.

By: pb

pb — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 20:59:48 -0800

No, like I mentioned above we don't have any plans for an iPhone app. I'm not sure there's a compelling reason beyond the "cool factor" of being listed in the iPhone app store--and there are several downsides including the fact that we'd need someone outside of ourselves to develop it. So a native iPhone app isn't in the cards.