All week, I've been testing a Responsive Web Design (RWD) for a new section of MrExcel.com called the Excel Mall. It is Friday afternoon, and I am looking for some people with a variety of phones (Android, Windows, iPhone) or tablets to give the new site a spin and let me know if the site is rendering OK on your device?
www.mrexcel.com
Excel Utilities
Transcript of the video:
Hey, welcome back to the MrExcel netcast, I'm Bill Jelen.
That's Friday afternoon and I'm going to ask you to do some beta testing.
What you see there on the screen, is one of my favorite paintings by a guy named David Milton from Laguna Beach, California.
I have bought this and I asked David if I could show it here on the episode.
On the actual one, the frame print that I have, David has scrawled on the bottom: “ARE you open?” It's just a great reminder of, you know, how you constantly have to pay attention to things.
And at MrExcel ,you know, we started our website back in 1998 using notepad and over the years things have dramatically changed in the world of web pages, and, you know, people are browsing on the phone, they're browsing on their tablet and so on.
And so, well, what you're looking at here, is our old page.
Right in the middle I've added a link to the Excel Mall and this is kind of exciting.
This is the first step in the direction of a Responsive Web Design.
What is Responsive Web Design?
That means that as we look at this on the tablet or on a phone, things are going to move around.
So right now here we're at the PivotTable store, with 3 columns of products, but as we get to a smaller footprint on the computer, eventually they will automatically change to 2 columns of products and the right navigation bar goes away.
It doesn't actually go away, the important stuff like Share and Search comes down here to the bottom of the left navigation.
But all the other stuff, the banners and things like that, go away.
And some of the things over here in the left navigation bar go away.
And then, as we get smaller and smaller, eventually get down to just a single column, because they assume that you're on the phone or something like that.
So here's some questions.
First of: is it obvious to you that this is a menu?
That when you go to MrExcel Mall Home, that you're going to get that?
It doesn't seem obvious to me and it works really well on the phone, but I'm not sure that it works so well here on the computer.
And then the big thing that I want you to do, because I can test it on a computer, I would like you to take whatever device you have, an iPad or an Android tablet, or a phone, iPhone, Android phone, and on your iPad or tablet go to MrExcel.com, click on Excel Mall and try it out.
So here's the device, I landscape, want to go to one of the sections, I get 3 columns, right.
It looks great.
And then when I turn, it changes back to a single column, alright.
So kind of clever the way there… that it works.
The menu here, I think makes a lot more sense, we have… Since we have no left navigation, we have Home, Forum and Blog, the 3 most important parts and then when you click on Home, you can go to any particular section that you would like.
All right, so grab your device, go to MrExcel.com, click on Excel Mall and click around, leave some comments down in the YouTube notes, if there's something that you think isn't intuitive or something we could improve.
I really appreciate your help.
That's Friday afternoon and I'm going to ask you to do some beta testing.
What you see there on the screen, is one of my favorite paintings by a guy named David Milton from Laguna Beach, California.
I have bought this and I asked David if I could show it here on the episode.
On the actual one, the frame print that I have, David has scrawled on the bottom: “ARE you open?” It's just a great reminder of, you know, how you constantly have to pay attention to things.
And at MrExcel ,you know, we started our website back in 1998 using notepad and over the years things have dramatically changed in the world of web pages, and, you know, people are browsing on the phone, they're browsing on their tablet and so on.
And so, well, what you're looking at here, is our old page.
Right in the middle I've added a link to the Excel Mall and this is kind of exciting.
This is the first step in the direction of a Responsive Web Design.
What is Responsive Web Design?
That means that as we look at this on the tablet or on a phone, things are going to move around.
So right now here we're at the PivotTable store, with 3 columns of products, but as we get to a smaller footprint on the computer, eventually they will automatically change to 2 columns of products and the right navigation bar goes away.
It doesn't actually go away, the important stuff like Share and Search comes down here to the bottom of the left navigation.
But all the other stuff, the banners and things like that, go away.
And some of the things over here in the left navigation bar go away.
And then, as we get smaller and smaller, eventually get down to just a single column, because they assume that you're on the phone or something like that.
So here's some questions.
First of: is it obvious to you that this is a menu?
That when you go to MrExcel Mall Home, that you're going to get that?
It doesn't seem obvious to me and it works really well on the phone, but I'm not sure that it works so well here on the computer.
And then the big thing that I want you to do, because I can test it on a computer, I would like you to take whatever device you have, an iPad or an Android tablet, or a phone, iPhone, Android phone, and on your iPad or tablet go to MrExcel.com, click on Excel Mall and try it out.
So here's the device, I landscape, want to go to one of the sections, I get 3 columns, right.
It looks great.
And then when I turn, it changes back to a single column, alright.
So kind of clever the way there… that it works.
The menu here, I think makes a lot more sense, we have… Since we have no left navigation, we have Home, Forum and Blog, the 3 most important parts and then when you click on Home, you can go to any particular section that you would like.
All right, so grab your device, go to MrExcel.com, click on Excel Mall and click around, leave some comments down in the YouTube notes, if there's something that you think isn't intuitive or something we could improve.
I really appreciate your help.
