Content is "portable" if you can read it easily on any device (it has portability), whether it's a large desktop screen or a tiny phone screen in the palm of your hand. Text should be comfortable to read, images should not be bigger than your screen, and all visible parts of the page should be fully functional, and in the right place.
Trying to read a page that was perfected for a large desktop screen on your phone can be very frustrating. If content was not designed with that type of use in mind, your smartphone screen will be bad at interpreting and displaying the page in a readable format. It is simply the wrong tool for the job - and with smartphones becoming more and more users' screen of choice, content needs to learn how to work with all devices.
What makes a page portable?[]
Portable pages are built in a way that allows any device to distinguish between what is styling and formatting information, and what is actual content. That way, the device can ignore the styling and formatting info it can't interpret, and display the content in a way that fits its screen. For example, lines of text will only be as wide as your screen, and not flow outside of it.
Images and other elements can move below or above text if there's not enough space next to the text, and a wide navigation bar at the top of a page can turn into a dropdown menu instead. To achieve this, editors need to avoid inline-styling, forced widths for images and other page elements, forced line breaks, and similar non-content information that specifies exactly how a page should look like - because that information may just be ignored or misinterpreted by mobile devices.
Want to make your content portable?[]
There are a number of changes you can make to your wiki's content to make it easier to read for your visitors.
- Main article: Check if your content has portability issues
- Main article: How to fix portability issues