A little bit later than hoped — the plan was to have it ready by the start of the season but this particular update, while cosmetically small to the viewer, was fiendishly difficult to get right and things have been pretty busy at Goodison lately with lots to cover! — ToffeeWeb has a slightly different look and layout for 2020-21. For the most part, things will look very similar and behave in much the same way on the same device but there have been some changes to the differences when switching between screen sizes.

What has changed? No more “mobile version”

The main difference between the previous layout and this one is that there is no longer a dedicated mobile version that you would toggle on or off (when it worked!) if you preferred to pinch and scroll the desktop version on a small screen. I'm not sure how many people (if any at this point) used the site that way but it felt a bit redundant and by using the same code now for all screen sizes, it's much easier for me to manage!

A by-product of the way the pages are now coded means that the tablet layout, in particular, should look a lot better which is long overdue and was the primary motivation for this latest update.

A new partnership

You might have noticed the inclusion on some recent transfer news articles and match report pages of a box featuring relevant podcasts from The Blue Room and that is part of a partnership we've struck up with Matt Jones and Dave Downie and the rest of their crew. As part of that new arrangement, I have already appeared on a couple of their shows and we'll have a prominent area on our pages with links to their latest releases. And we'll be cross-posting articles on TBR's own website on ToffeeWeb as we did with Matt's recent piece on Dominic Calvert-Lewin.

There is a lot of Everton-related content out there in terms of social media presence, podcasts, fan sites and blogs but in terms of content, tone, measured views and dedication, I've found The Blue Room most closely fits my vision and approach to ToffeeWeb. We're still working out what other forms our collaboration can take but I'm really looking forward to seeing how we can support each other in the months to come.

In the meantime, subscribe to their feeds wherever you download podcasts and check out The Blue Room Extra which offers tonnes more content for just £3.99 a month.

Feedback and ideas are always appreciated

If there is anything seriously awry with this update, please do let me know, either in the comments below or via email and please include the device/platform/browser that you're seeing problems in. It's hard to test everything across all the myriad devices, platforms and screen sizes (online/browser-based emulators only go so far) so if it's not displaying right after a few refreshes, get in touch or post it here.

Known issues:

  • for those for whom it used to work, the Edit button is currently broken due to a conflict between jQuery and the code that triggers the menu on the mobile layout.
  • the formatting buttons for comments (bold, italics, etc) aren't working either for the same reason
  • Scrolling on iPad is a little loose

(If you're one of the holdouts still using IE9 or earlier for Windows, things won't look right at all; I'll work on cleaning that up a bit soon but it's a very small slice of the audience at this point.)

Also, if you have any other suggestions or ideas for the site, I'm always receptive to them. I'm aware that a LOT of interior pages don't display well on mobile devices. OK, they're a mess! But that's my next project, starting with things like the match report pages. There are also some long-standing fixes to be resolved (like the way the Edit button on comments only displays for some people) as well as a few forthcoming Patron subscriber benefits, fixing the search facility, etc.

While I'm here, I'll throw in a reminder that for less than the cost of a pint in many places — and considerably less than in others! — you sign up to become a ToffeeWeb Patron which allows you to browse the site completely free of ads and those clickbait boxes. I have always tried to keep the site as user-friendly as possible and if you've visited some of the general media and sports websites which are now practically, unusable you'll know how much revenue ToffeeWeb foregoes by taking the minimalist approach that I do.

But the plain fact is that ad banner revenue has been declining as ad-blockers have become standard in many browsers and the display ad industry has been very badly affected by the pandemic. It takes many, many hours a day to keep this site running and up to date and any extra contributions can offset that a bit.

Cheers!