No major writeup this time. Just a quick announcement that has been a long time coming.
The charts now work on mobile devices!
One of the downsides of working so heavily in Tools like Excel is that the experience on mobile has never been a major priority. Even when you can embed spreadsheets in a page, the memory required presents significant technical problems on many phones. So even though I love presenting data-dense visuals, they generally haven’t played nice with mobile devices.
Thanks to a bit of inspiration and the help of your friendly neighborhood AI coding assistant, I have finally created a much more sophisticated method of embedding charts on the site.
If you mainly browse on a computer, you probably won’t notice any huge difference other than a dedicated chart window. The performance data also moved from the bottom of each Portfolio page up to the top where it belongs. But the big upgrades are on the mobile side. If you have ever browsed the charts in your spare time on a smartphone and been frustrated with the previous experience, now is the time to give it another try.
The New Mobile Interface
Whenever you encounter an interactive chart on a mobile device, you’ll be greeted with a placeholder.
The purpose of the extra step is to keep the mobile experience speedy and lightweight by default. But click the Activate button and wait a few seconds, and you’ll get a fully interactive chart.
The chart is contained in its own window, and you can easily drag the image to pan to the part you want and double-tap a black cell to change a number. They are the exact same interactive charts you find on the site! Just packaged in a mobile-friendly container.
Everything Has a Tradeoff
In order to address the technical limitations that held me back from proper mobile embeds over the years, I had to make a few sacrifices.
First, the feature that lets you directly overlay two different portfolio ideas and compare the results by dragging a slider is reserved solely for desktop use. That’s because phones can handle one chart but not two. Simple enough.
Next, the full-sized chart in a small window may take some getting used to depending on the size of your screen. Zooming in and out may feel natural but is a major technical hurdle for something like this, so locking it at something big and easy to read and interact with made the most sense. It does work in landscape, mode, though, which I highly recommend for browsing the visuals.
And finally, meeting the technical requirements for every mobile device out there is a daunting task. I have already done a bunch of troubleshooting on both iOS and Android and squashed as many bugs as I can, but there will definitely be hiccups. For example, trying to zoom within a chart on an iPhone is highly likely to cause a crash and page reload, and Android has a habit of cutting off the very bottom of charts in landscape mode. So if your particular device has issues, I apologize ahead of time. This is definitely a bit experimental!
All that said, I’m really happy with where the new embed tool stands and I’m confident it will make your mobile experience much better. Please don’t hesitate to contact me with bug reports (please include your device and browser) so that I can improve things over time.
Every Step Matters
I have always taken pride in continuous improvement. Small steps forward add up over time, so I hope you enjoy this improvement. But even more than that, I hope the additional experiences with portfolio data that you can now have on-the-go throughout the day help you get that much closer to your goals.
Enjoy the charts!
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