It "works", but not without copious zooming and scrolling. Clicking the vote buttons in particular is a kind of challenge I don't like subjecting myself to and I actually find I vote on comments much less frequently on my phone than on my desktop browser just because its such a pain.
I know what you mean about many mobile sites since people often assume the only mobile devices are iPhones and Androids and nothing else, but that doesn't mean the way this site works is any better :)
I agree about the voting buttons and mobile use in general on this site (many links are small and hard to hit) but to be fair that has nothing to do with the use of table tags and center.
I wouldn't say it's impossible to read on my 4S, but it is certainly not "optimal", due to the table-based layout (with large margins). The page is zoomed out quite far when first loaded. Text is rendered pretty small, even when you double-tap to zoom in on the content "column". It's readable for me, but I still have pretty reasonable eye-sight. I can imagine it would be a lot harder if your eyes were even just slightly less capable than mine.
As for the original question "why?" - my guess is because a) it works, and b) it's quick. Sometimes you need to be pragmatic about these things.
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Interesting. It works fine for me on my mobile device, and on my netbook, whereas other modern mobile sites often don't.
It "works", but not without copious zooming and scrolling. Clicking the vote buttons in particular is a kind of challenge I don't like subjecting myself to and I actually find I vote on comments much less frequently on my phone than on my desktop browser just because its such a pain.
I know what you mean about many mobile sites since people often assume the only mobile devices are iPhones and Androids and nothing else, but that doesn't mean the way this site works is any better :)
I agree about the voting buttons and mobile use in general on this site (many links are small and hard to hit) but to be fair that has nothing to do with the use of table tags and center.
What mobile device do you have? It's impossible to read on my iPhone.
I wouldn't say it's impossible to read on my 4S, but it is certainly not "optimal", due to the table-based layout (with large margins). The page is zoomed out quite far when first loaded. Text is rendered pretty small, even when you double-tap to zoom in on the content "column". It's readable for me, but I still have pretty reasonable eye-sight. I can imagine it would be a lot harder if your eyes were even just slightly less capable than mine.
As for the original question "why?" - my guess is because a) it works, and b) it's quick. Sometimes you need to be pragmatic about these things.
Do people really read the desktop version on mobile? The hn.gethifi mobile site is excellent!
Renders perfectly well on my Blackberry (foist upon me by work)