We finally launched the mobile version of LinkUp this week, and since then we've heard nothing but requests of "when will the tablet version be ready?"<p>Asking this question on SO, you hear nothing but mantras about "responsive design" and "go where the users are." Great points given infinite resources, but if we had those we wouldn't be on HN on a weekend. I had thought that the point of tablet was to make the desktop-experience more portable, but the cries of the masses are leading me to think I was misled.<p>So to the Hacker News community - are tablet-oriented websites really something in our future?
The reason you're getting requests for a "tablet version" may be because (when I tested it out) you're redirecting tablets to the m. version of the site. As you said, a tablet can handle much of what a desktop can, so tablet users tend to be a little annoyed when they are forced onto a version of the site that is clearly made for smaller devices.<p>I think if you alter your redirection rules to allow tablets to go to the main version of the site, that may satisfy most of your users until you can get a responsive design going.
> I had thought that the point of tablet was to make the desktop-experience more portable<p>Desktops and tablets are designed around two completely different principles. Interaction on desktop is about clicking and typing; tablets are all about multitouch - dragging, pinching, swiping, etc.<p>As a general point, it saddens me that even tablet app developers seem to forget that tablets have a) bigger screens and b) multitouch. Clearly, new UI metaphors have to be invented for multitouch devices.