Two Way Hard Three | Las Vegas Casino & Design Blog

In the past week or so, the folks at the Review-Journal have rolled out a new mobile Web site. Unfortunately, in the process it appears a few things aren't quite working properly yet.

Like many news organizations, the RJ now has a mobile specific site designed to make it easier to read on smaller screens. This practice is not entirely without controversy - some make a strong argument that a well designed Web site doesn't need a separate mobile version and that users with sophisticated smart-phones would rather just get the full features of the 'real' site. This is even more true with larger devices like iPad and thus companies like the New York Times just show the real deal (or have custom apps).

Some of the issues I've noticed with m.lvrj.com:

1. You're sent to the mobile site by default and there doesn't appear to be an easy way (any way?) to access the real site on an iPhone.

2. The desktop site and the mobile site appear to be at least somewhat out of sync. For example, there's an article about Pinnacle appearing on lvrj.com right now that doesn't appear on the mobile site - in fact, the entire business sub-section seems a day old. I'm guessing the mobile site isn't directly published by their CMS - looks like the content is delayed somewhat. Not exactly a great feature for a news site, to be missing the latest content.

and perhaps the biggest issue:

3. If you follow a link to a specific story from a tweet or email on an iPhone or Android device, you don't get the story, you get the mobile index. No context and no clues as how to find the story, if it's even on the mobile site (see #3). This behavior seems at least partially dependent on the referring site - when clicking through from TWHT I got the real site but when I clicked the link from an email (no referrer), I get redirected.

Hopefully these are just temporary bugs that will be fixed soon. What's weird is that I'm getting the results inconsistently, as if different requests are hitting different Web servers that aren't all configured the same way. At first I thought I was crazy or had done something that locked me into the mobile site. I don't think that's the case but if you get different results or know a work-around (other than changing the user-agent), please post a comment.

I haven't been able to nail down a specific access pattern but between lvrj.com, www.lvrj.com and reviewjournal.com, I can usually get the full site on the iPad if I try.

To compare, here's the normal site and then the mobile site on the tablet screen. If I could choose, I'd just stick to the real site and have them focus their time on improving that, creating a better experience for all users.

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