"BookMooch Mobile" is now available.

This is an extensive mobile-friendly version of all of BookMooch. It should look very good on iPhones, Android Phones, current Blackberry devices, and be acceptable on old mobile phones.

To go to it, visit http://bookmooch.com/mobile/

When you visit BookMooch with a mobile device, a message appears at the top of the home with a "click here for BookMooch mobile" link. This is what the home page looks like now from an iPhone:

If you want to use the normal BookMooch web site but you're on your mobile device: no problem. Just ignore the "click here" message on the home page and use the web site as normal. The "click here" message only appears on the home page.

The first page you encounter asks you if you are a member or not:

Most of the BookMooch Mobile's features are available only to members.

However, I thought that there would be situations where you might talk to someone about BookMooch, maybe at a book event, and they can sign up on the spot.

Here is the menu of features for non-members:

and a "join bookmooch" page:

If you click the "Existing Member" link, you are asked for your BookMooch name/password, and then you get this Member Main Menu:

Note that the screen above is from an Android phone, just to show you that it looks ok.

On a really ancient mobile phone, this is what the main menu should look like:

Please let me know if the mobile interface looks ok or not on your phone. I went to a lot of trouble to make it look as good possible on those old phones, yet look great on new phones.

You might want to use BookMooch Mobile from a computer if you're somewhere that has very bad Internet connection. There is a link to BookMooch Mobile from the Tools Menu. Here is what the book details page looks like in Firefox:

and on a blackberry 9800:

when you search, any books that are moochable have a Heart icon next to them.

and a "mooch" button appears on the book details page.

Note that you can mooch books, and even "ask first" is implemented.

I implemented most of what you normally do with BookMooch, except: smooches, member bios, save-for-later, advanced search, forums, and charity. In addition, you can only browse for books using search: none of the fancier ways of finding books are in BookMooch mobile. If BookMooch Mobile ends up getting used a lot, I can certainly add the missing features people want on their phone.

More features

You can view book covers by clicking the "cover" button (top right) on any book details page:

You view the books you are giving:

If you click on the "Bring to meeting" link on a book that is a "meet & mooch", you get a nice shopping-list of books you need to bring with you. This is also handy in that you can pop your phone out at the meeting, and indicate the book as "sent" when you hand it to someone. Similarly, people receiving books at a meeting can look at their list and mark them as received at the meeting.

You can manage your inventory:

and you can manage your wishlist:

Other Languages

Note that the mobile site is fully internationalized, and is available in all the same languages as the main site. For example, you can access the French BookMooch Mobile at http://fr.bookmooch.com/mobile/

Here is the join page in French:

and just like the main site, members can correct the translation on the spot. The "correct the translation" link is found at the bottom of every page, normally unobtrusively off-screen (you have to scroll down to the bottom of the page)

which leads to a translation correction page:

Very small files sizes

Data usage from your mobile phone should be pretty tiny.

For example, my inventory page is just 4k uncompressed, and most mobile devices support .gzip compression, in which case my inventory is just a 1661 byte download.

Even at a very expensive foreign data rate, say $10 per meg, it would take 631 views on my inventory page to get to 1 meg of data usage. In another way of looking at it, my inventory would cost 1.5 cents to load if you're paying a $10/meg data plan.

And $10/meg is the most expensive I've ever heard of.

The main reason to have very small files is that mobile internet is often slow, and so small files speed that up. However, it also means lower data costs, if you're on a pay-as-you system.

Do let me know how this works out for you. Did I not include your favorite feature? Does it not look right on your phone? Or do you like it?

-john

The only thing that seems a bit odd and suboptimal to me is using this on non-mobile devices: you can't get to the mobile interface directly, you have to load the full page first, log in, and then pull it up via the Tools menu.

This is good point. Two thoughts:

- I've now added a "Mobile Version" link at the bottom right of the home page (ie http://bookmooch.com) -- just to the right of the other language versions of BM.

- you could always add "/mobile/" to the end of your url, ie http://bookmooch.com/mobile/ and go directly there.

I love that the pending is divided into 'getting & giving' so I can quickly check now to
a) not buy the book
b) not mooch the book again
c) remind to check on the mooch...

Question: is there a way to sort wish-list by count as in the usual?
I can see this being very helpful with large wish-lists to 'mooch on the go'!

Thanks for this - I will use it a lot.
~ Lyn

eta: I can foresee a desire for viewing 'save-for-later' too - I would like to.

Unfortunately, I had to trim features for the mobile version, and for now, the book lists are all sorted by Author.

In the future, I could add a "settings" page for the mobile wishlist/inventory to let you resort.

-john

-Sarah

I have a BB Storm and it looks well although the top of each listing or link is merged a bit with the blue at the top...doesn't hinder anything

Yes, I also saw that problem with IE version 6 (the version from 2004!).

What it is, is the "back" button being overlaid on the title instead of appearing on the left hand side. You can still click on it, though, which is funny. Also, in my case, the "search" button, which is supposed to appear on the top right of almost every page, doesn't exist.

This only happens on a few phones that have an old "CSS" technology implementation: if your phone doesn't have CSS capability at all, the page works fine.

I decided to just live with it, since the "back" button on your telephone will continue to work and you can find "Search" through a phone bookmark.

-john

I can't log in on my Samsung Genio Touch. After I put in the password and username it keeps asking me to put it again.

If you can't get past the first login page, then it might be that you're not able to type the password perfectly on your phone. You might try chnging your pw to something easier to type.

If you can get to the first page (ie the member main menu) they yes, your phone probably can't do it.

-john

Thanks again for all the new improvements!