Blakeyrat pointing out NodeBB problems

if there was a reliable way to tell the difference between desktop and mobile, then people would use it. But there isn't, because mobile browsers don't support handheld properly.

Metafilter handles this well.

www.metafilter.com sends a couple of persistent cookies to say whether the site is (a) supposed to be displayed in mobile mode or not (b) whether the server is supposed to guess the mode based on the browser UA.

If the initial guess is wrong, you can force a switch from desktop to mobile mode by browsing to mobile.metafilter.com, or a switch from mobile mode to desktop mode by clicking the "Switch to standard site" link at the bottom of every page.

It seems to me that per-site per-browser config like this is exactly the kind of thing that cookies are good for.

RaceProUK

@flabdablet Personally, I'd prefer local storage for that sort of setting, but cookies work

Maciejasjmj

@Onyx said:

User-Agent sniffing. Hey, we already concluded that's a great idea, didn't we?

Actually... that's not too bad. It's guesswork anyway, but a) the user can change the user agent, and most mobile browser have a "fake desktop" mode, and b) it's probably more accurate to assume a mobile browser will want a mobile version.

A setting which overrides it is still all-but-necessary, though.

@RaceProUK said:

User agent sniffing was known to be unreliable 15 years ago

Guess what, when it comes to determining what kind of experience user wants to have, so's size sniffing.

RaceProUK

@Maciejasjmj said:

Guess what, when it comes to determining what kind of experience user wants to have, so's size sniffing.

It may be unreliable, but it's the best alternative that currently exists

blakeyrat

There I filed a bunch of these in GitHub.

Now I get to watch them be completely ignored. Whee.

darkmatter

@Maciejasjmj said:

Just look at a fucking user agent, that's how it's been solved for years and hell, it mostly even works.

MOSTLY
Then we have a different variation on the exact same problem we have here, using resolution MOSTLY works.

@Maciejasjmj said:

And the user can even configure their browser to override that setting, both on mobile and on desktop.

No, some browsers don't let you override that setting. Once again it would only MOSTLY work.

darkmatter

@Maciejasjmj said:

A simple toaster when you first visit the site saying "hey, that's our desktop/mobile version, if you'd rather have the other one click here

You keep calling it a mobile version. It's a shitty small screen version. It has nothing to do with mobile or devices. Their low res site is simply a piss poor design that is invoked at too high of a resolution.

@blakeyrat said:

And yet, Fark.com does it perfectly.

For you, so far. I thought this site did it just fine until I tried your bizarre resolution/zoom combo.

loopback0

However Discourse handled this worked much better.

I can make my browser as narrow as it goes, and it still shows the desktop view
It originally defaulted my iPhone 6S to desktop view, but a simple click of the option in the hamburger menu got mobile view back - and it's actually been updated to detect the 6S properly now
It was possible to use the desktop view on mobile by simply selecting the "request desktop mode" option

If how you handle something is worse than Discourse, you've made the wrong decision IMO.

darkmatter

I get a toaster:

"ERROR
no-plugins-available"

when trying to use in-topic search.

A slight improvement over dicsourse, which tried to pretend like it might actually be searching the topic.

darkmatter

@darkmatter according to the notifications icon, @luhmann and 5 others upvoted one of the posts I made... but the post it takes me to shows just 1 username having upvoted it (I understand that the actual upvoted value might be lower than the # of people to upvote it, if others are downvoting).

So I click to "see all notifications" and that list tells me that luhmann and ELEVEN others upvoted it?! I don't even care if it is upvoted or not, I was just interested to see what other users are enjoying the mockery. But I guess nodeBB lies and it's just me and the Belgian.

I can't even math.

aliceif

@darkmatter It seems to aggregate all likes you got in a topic.

darkmatter

@aliceif per day even, because I still see the notification from yesterday telling me so and so plus 4 others upvoted.
So completely useless, especially since it directs you to a specific post (presumably the last one to get liked).

And none of that explains how it went from X+5 in the dropdown to X+11 in the full listing??!

darkmatter

@darkmatter Goddamnit. it's not aggregated because Polygeekery just upvoted and it made a new listing...
0_1458938850478_upload-8a09a922-0824-42a7-b304-24f8a3e39e60

what the bloody hell

darkmatter

@darkmatter even better because now it STILL says polygeeker upvoted me, but he's upvoting the one that is the picture of him upvoting?!?!

0_1458938961047_upload-000f1f09-c610-4534-82cb-a17a6d58c195

Polygeekery

@darkmatter said:

And none of that explains how it went from X+5 in the dropdown to X+11 in the full listing??!

I ran in to some of that DiscoMath yesterday on one of my posts. In my case it also showed a like counter that was 6-7 less than the number you get when you hover over the .25px location that shows you some of the people that liked your post plus another number to add to that.

The way it handles upvotes beyond 6 is absolute shit.

fbmac

@blakeyrat said:

When you chose that framework, YOU ALSO CHOSE ITS BUGS. And now you have to fix them.

when you chose to make it web based you chose to have billions of bugs you won't be able to fix, but users want it

web is no place for bug free apps

RaceProUK

@Polygeekery @darkmatter What's happening is the link does take you to the right post… then the images load and push it down off the screen

aliceif

@RaceProUK said:

@Polygeekery @darkmatter What's happening is the link does take you to the right post… then the images load and push it down off the screen

That is a different bug. I have seen a notification for 5 likes in a topic - where my most upvoted post had 3 votes.

loopback0

@aliceif Yeah, it aggregates all the unread notifications for likes in the topic since the last time you viewed it. Viewing it makes the notification read, so the next time you get an upvote you get a new notification.

Arantor

@RaceProUK I'm frequently taken to a post earlier than the last unread... I don't mean either jellypotatoed or images pushing off the page, but frequently like it's just not picked up me reading a thread.

I have also had a bunch of cases where I've hit "69 of 99" posts but shown the footer stuff with no way to load the rest. Multiple leave-reenter trips fail to change it, with only hard refresh making a difference (sometimes)

fbmac

@Polygeekery said:

If I get any happier, I will look like a goddamned emoji.

that emoji is scary, he looks like a serial killer or something

OffByOne

@coldandtired said:

@Maciejasjmj I 'like' the similar thing of deciding what language you see the site in based on your IP.

That's even more fun when you're living in a country that has more than one official language.

RaceProUK

@Arantor 'Last unread' on that toaster is a typo; it should say 'Last read'

loopback0

@RaceProUK said:

'Last unread' on that toaster is a typo; it should say 'Last read'

Yes, but I still sometimes get what @Arantor described. A post that's nowhere near the last read post.

darkmatter

@RaceProUK said:

What's happening is the link does take you to the right post… then the images load and push it down off the screen

no, it's really not what's happening here.
what happened there is that polygeekery liked 3 of my posts, and each time it sent me a new notification but updated the old notification in the list to point to the last of the 3 that he had liked. So by the time I clicked the link on the first notification to clear it, it took me to the post I made about him upvoting previous posts.

darkmatter

@loopback0 said:

A post that's nowhere near the last read post.

So you think...!

If you happened to have scrolled back up a bit and then closed the thread, then this thing takes the "LAST READ" in last read post literally and sets your spot to the last post that happened to be in your view, rather than the highest # post that you have read.

At least, that's what it seems like it's doing to me.
edit: or not, can't repro it when I actually try to make it happen.

This thing is as disconsistent as dischorse was!

julianlam

@darkmatter The notifications grouping was a fairly recent addition, so it's... a little rough around the edges. Sorry

Bugs filed against that would help... and hey, you guys will like this... I never tested the notification grouping on upvotes past 3... now you have 6 upvotes?

But yeah... the "so and so have upvoted your post" should be grouping on a per post level.. so you could have two posts inside this @blakeyrat topic that have been upvoted by separate people, and it is supposed to correctly show this:

A and B have upvoted your post in Belgium (onclick goes to topics/123/belgium/6)
B, C, and two others have upvoted your post in Belgium (onclick goes to topics/123/belgium/8)

Obviously, it's a notification that sure seems like it ought to be collapsed, but they actually point to different posts...

Open to ideas on how to improve the UX for that particular problem too.

julianlam

@RaceProUK said:

(Bootstrap 4 is dropping IE8 support, and will use ems exclusively, avoiding this issue entirely)

That's fantastic to hear, actually. If it makes @blakeyrat happy, we'll try to expedite adoption of BS4 when it comes out

blakeyrat

@julianlam said:

That's fantastic to hear, actually. If it makes @blakeyrat happy, we'll try to expedite adoption of BS4 when it comes out

RaceProUck DOES NOT SPEAK FOR ME.

The bug is simple: I do not want to see mobile view on a desktop computer, ever. That is the bug. That is the entire bug.

Please fix it.

Tsaukpaetra

@julianlam said:

Open to ideas on how to improve the UX for that particular problem too.

TBH since the dropdown is so darn small you're arbitrarily limited to how much data you can put in it.
0_1458970789877_upload-c3eeb932-ad99-46e2-93d4-d9d85c143064

I don't really care too much who upvoted as much, and showing only the first one's avatar when there are multiple is somewhat misleading.

Something like:
0_1458971329487_upload-3c5d9131-cc5c-4343-9e72-25605f71dfd2
0_1458971594518_upload-fd87113a-3f23-4356-a86b-44a2083bdf98
The size should be adjustable (and remember its adjustment!).

Profile icons are optional, they only serve as eye candy unless you're going to include the username in a tooltip (and how that gets implemented on mobile ...

Edit: I have literally no use for the "viewed" bubble. The item is highlighted when untouched, and not so when touched. In most themes this is incredibly obvious, and the bubble just makes it more confusing.

julianlam

@Tsaukpaetra said:

and the bubble just makes it more confusing.

Good feedback. I added the circle indicator (blatantly copied that one off of facebook, actually) because there are certain notifications that don't go anywhere... or that you might not want to follow.

e.g. @Tsaukpaetra started following you

If clicked, goes to your profile, but maybe I just want to dismiss it. That's all.

Tsaukpaetra

@julianlam said:

because there are certain notifications that don't go anywhere

Oh. Well to that effect, NodeBB has effectively trained me to ignore certain categories of notifications implicitly (like upvotes, bookmarks) until I can go to the notifications page and clear them out in one go.

Actually, while we're on the subject, would it be possible to add tabs to the popup or some other way of selecting which notifications to show?

0_1458972699143_upload-1cef8238-ddc7-4373-b942-2c562e460ce3

sloosecannon

@Maciejasjmj said:

A simple toaster

Uh, no. Fuck that.

sloosecannon

@blakeyrat said:

@Onyx said:

Suggest a better one. Or write a better one.

YOU WROTE SHIT FOR WEB! YOU KNOW HOW BROKEN THIS SHIT IS! THIS IS THE BEST WE CAN CURRENTLY FUCKING DO!

Fark.com does it correctly, to repeat this point for seemingly the 57th time.

Find out what they're doing, and do that.

m.fark.com

BZZZZZZT.
Fail.

Try again.

sloosecannon

@mikehurley said:

@Maciejasjmj said:

@mikehurley said:

Have a site's main URL go to the desktop version. Have a m.foo.bar version for mobile. If you're on your mobile device just go to the m. URL. Don't try to magic the user to the right URL.

Bzzt. All internal links now throw you out of mobile mode and into desktop mode, or vice versa.

Why wouldn't the desktop URL send back desktop links and the mobile URL send back mobile links? I don't understand why it'd necessarily bounce you into the wrong mode, unless it was made wrong.

I'm in mobile mode. I copy the URL out of my browser and put it in the post. It says m.site.com.

I click it on desktop. I'm now in mobile mode.

Or vice versa, which is probably worse.

That is not an effective method.

sloosecannon

@Polygeekery said:

@blakeyrat said:

So at 125% zoom, it's not 990 pixels (or whatever the specific value is), it's 1237 pixels.

No, it isn't.

@blakeyrat said:

Which I think we ALL can agree is ridiculously wide.

If it were true, yes it would be.

Yeah, he's been saying that. I'm not quite sure if he realized he's doing the math for that backwards...

dkf

@RaceProUK said:

all they want to see is the dancing kittens

Link plz

RaceProUK

@dkf said:

Link plz

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLCOTpjBGcs

@julianlam said:

That's fantastic to hear, actually. If it makes @blakeyrat happy, we'll try to expedite adoption of BS4 when it comes out

It'll be a while; the first alpha was released back in August, and as far as I can tell, there's been no release since. It is still being worked on though; as of posting, the last commit was just two days ago.

blakeyrat

@julianlam said:

Good feedback. I added the circle indicator (blatantly copied that one off of facebook, actually) because there are certain notifications that don't go anywhere... or that you might not want to follow.

If they're not actionable, and you admit they're not actionable, why are you showing them to the user?

I don't want to see useless notifications.

Polygeekery

@blakeyrat said:

RaceProUck DOES NOT SPEAK FOR ME.

I know you don't understand the human concept of sarcasm...but that was it. File it away for later study.

Polygeekery

@sloosecannon said:

I'm in mobile mode. I copy the URL out of my browser and put it in the post. It says m.site.com.
I click it on desktop. I'm now in mobile mode.
Or vice versa, which is probably worse.
That is not an effective method.

Yep. Just this week I was on my phone and found a page on a Confluence site that I wanted to review on my desktop later. I email the link to myself, open it on desktop and was stuck in mobile view on a 2K monitor with no way to get out as "mobile" was a string fed through the link parser and removing it just made Confluence shit itself.

I ended up having to do a Google site search to find the fucking article. Fuck mobile sites. I don't mind responsive sites because I am not a total cockhole who refuses to enlarge my browser window a few pixels.

RaceProUK

@Polygeekery said:

I don't mind responsive sites because I am not a total cockhole who refuses to enlarge my browser window a few pixels.

You're also not a 'total cockhole' (as you put it) who refuses to use a browser that doesn't have the WebKit bug

fbmac

@RaceProUK I am still shocked he uses chrome instead of IE