Modern Webdesign and my gripes with it (RANT)


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    So.... this is going to be a bit ranty. I will probably get sidetracked a lot. I am also not blakeyrat, so don't hold me to unachievable standards. Thanks in advance.

    So, it has been a while since I developed things on the webs and the web has changed quite a lot since then. I usually coded websites for fun, not for money so I never felt the need to keep up with current trends and fads. I liked coding Javascript by hand, too. JQuery is really cool but I loved to discover how things worked one layer below. So here are some things about current web-design that I cannot understand.

    Disclaimer: I will use Discourse as an example because it is very much a up-to-date web"app". This is not a Discourse-hate-thread...sorry

    1.) Links that are not really links
    Sometimes browsers add new features to their repertoir. Sometimes they fail, sometimes they are pretty amazing. Tabs for example are (imo) a really cool idea. Not sure what I think about tabs that open a new process and clog up my Taskmanager (looking at you Chrome and Opera) but hell, I can see the advantages of that and ultimately deal with it.
    So, now that tabs are a thing, they integrated into my workflow. I like opening certain links in a new tab. Not only does it open the new content seperated from the old one, it also preserves the state of the old tab for me to switch back to without reloading (ala back-button).
    At the end of my webprogramming-phase the W3C or whoever decides things like this felt the need to deprecate target="_blank" from links. I personally think that was really stupid because as the designer of a website there are links I want people to open outside of the current context but I am just a guy.... maybe there is some amazing thought behind that.
    What resulted from that were some Javascript-workarounds at first. Better tell Javascript to open things in a new tab and return a false so browsers don't accidentally open the page on both tabs, etc. I found these scripts to be really hacky. "Hey Browser, I am going to open this tab in a new window so please don't do your job of activating this link, kthxbye" should really be a last resort.
    What followed were even more Javascript beauties. "Hey, why not use Ajax for the whole site, gather the content this way and ignore the whole browser loads content to begin with?" Why not? Because it gives me, the user no advantage. It just screws things up even more. Want to open a link in a new tab? Sorry, this is an Ajax-Link. No Content for you, son.
    See, I know there are programmers who actually enabled opening in new tabs by Ctrl+Click (or middleclick or menu -> open in new tab) and it worked (I know youtube actually had to add that to their channel-system after it was revised once.... because people flipped out) and that is cool and all. But There are a lot of websites that don't. And some, that sometimes do.
    Here comes Discourse. A challenge for you guys (assuming you are on the desktop version): click on the burger-menu-thing, hold ctrl, click on "badges", see as a new site pops up in a new tab.
    This is good, this is what I wanted.
    Repeat the steps but this time click on "keyboard shortcuts". See how another tab opened that is the same as this one? No keyboard shortcuts, you say. Oh boy....
    This is my problem. The whole thing where everything is an app and Javascript has to step in to save the day but not really makes navigating the web really weird.
    I know why "keyboard shortcuts" doesn't work the way "badges" does. I know it now, after trying it. And because I like to assume I understand the basics of how these things work. But it is confusing, stupid and should not really take my time.

    2.) Everything is an app
    I hinted at it in the previous wall of text. Why does everything try to look different from a website now? Some people did it. For some people it made sense. Why does Discourse do it? Because it's new and fancy and everybody does it and therfor everybody is the same in being different.
    I kind of get it. You get the tools. You learn HTML, CSS, Javascript and some backend-language like PHP or RoR or whatever and now you want to do something new and amazing... Except it's not new, it's not amazing and it certainly does not help people navigating your mess of a site.
    Things are apparently not allowed to not have at least 3 Javascript-dropdown-menus that break every 5 minutes. Scrolling has to change the header on Discourse to the title. Infinitescroll has been bashed a lot on this site, so I don't need to do it again but I am going to say: while it does bring some good things it also breaks at least just as many.

    3.) Everything (that is not an app) is obviously a phone!
    Hey guys, did you know smartphones exist and are a thing and you can even look at websites on them. They even have decent resolution on them so clearly we should serve a custom interface for it.
    I like that thought. Yes, phones are a thing and yes, you should change your approach towards the userbase that uses a smartphone to look at your site. It's just that... only changing the design doesn't help much.
    See, I have a bad cellphone-plan. I have slow internet. I actually only have 30 MB of reasonably fast internet / month. and I am fine with that. I would freaking appreciate it, if websites not only changed their design but try to improve loadingtimes, too, though. I know Discourse tries by only loading GIANT amounts of a topic on desktops.
    And thats cool... except it still takes ~3-5 minutes to load the damn thing. (and yes, my phone-internet is TRWTF, thanks for asking).
    Some old shitty website I built back in the days takes 5 seconds. I tested it just now. I had never opened it with this phone before. Well... it is still loading some images for the background but I can freaking DO things. It also does NOT have a web-interface. It is loading the freaking desktop site just fine.
    Discourse on the other hand is still loading. Well...since I didn't touch my phone it went into standby.
    Also worth noting is that pressing the refresh on android-phone does in fact not refresh the site but gives me back the site I had before (same topics and notifications). Took me a while before I figured that out. Still confusing. I am not sure who is at fault here.... freaking phones these days...

    Addendum: Oh since I am on the topic.... combining the last 2 things. I hate that Discourse Ajax-loads shit on my phone. I can never tell if I missclicked or it is just loading things (and I don't mean scrolling down because swiping gives me a feedback AND there is the "loading" bar.
    What I mean is for example clicking on the header to go back to the main-forum-page. I don't get a loading bar, there is NOTHING indicating that I am now going back to the mainpage. And it still takes 5 minutes so I can never be sure.... Seriously, that frustrates me!

    So here are my thoughts on some (3) things I really don't feel about this "new web"-thing. And I don't want to sound like some kind of old guy saying "everything was better when I was younger and also things should never change" but to me it feels like these are things that should be the primary focus...
    1.) Have links behave somewhat consitently and please let me open new things in new tabs if I so desire, thanks.
    2.) Why you need to make your website flash and pop and dance the whole time is beyond me. Some parts, maybe... the whole thing? Thanks no!
    3.) If I surf mobile and you offer me a mobile view, please make sure to not only change the design but also maybe give me a smaller version so I have a chance to fucking view the damn website....

    I am not too sure why I even wrote this rant. It started with me Ctrl-clicking on "keyboard shortcuts". I am also pretty sure I could go on but now I am tired and all out of rant-juice or whatever it is that keeps ranting people from just falling apart.

    Not too sure what category this is. There is no "Rant"-category so General has to do.

    I am pretty sure half of the statements in this wall of text don't even make sense. I just wrote what came to mind. Feel free to point out my stupidity. You can also add your own thoughts about this. OR you could derail this topic and talk about kittens. I don't even care 😃

    Filed Under: tired



  • @Kuro said:

    1.) Links that are not really links

    What, like how Ctrl/Shift + clicking on your avatar in the upper right corner doesn't behave as expected?



  • @Kuro said:

    Not sure what I think about tabs that open a new process and clog up my Taskmanager (looking at you Chrome and Opera) but hell, I can see the advantages of that and ultimately deal with it.

    They use separate processes so that if one crashes, it doesn't crash the browser. This is why I don't use Firefox and its one process.



  • @Kuro said:

    At the end of my webprogramming-phase the W3C or whoever decides things like this felt the need to deprecate target="_blank" from links. I personally think that was really stupid because as the designer of a website there are links I want people to open outside of the current context but I am just a guy.... maybe there is some amazing thought behind that.What resulted from that were some Javascript-workarounds at first. Better tell Javascript to open things in a new tab and return a false so browsers don't accidentally open the page on both tabs, etc. I found these scripts to be really hacky. "Hey Browser, I am going to open this tab in a new window so please don't do your job of activating this link, kthxbye" should really be a last resort.

    Every browser supports it, and it works so much better than anything anyone has ever scripted, so I continue to use it and tell the W3C to sod off.


  • :belt_onion:

    @Kuro said:

    A challenge for you guys (assuming you are on the desktop version): click on the burger-menu-thing, hold ctrl, click on "badges", see as a new site pops up in a new tab.This is good, this is what I wanted.Repeat the steps but this time click on "keyboard shortcuts". See how another tab opened that is the same as this one? No keyboard shortcuts

    This is maddening. Either a link should be a link that works for opening in new tabs/whatever, or it shouldn't be a fucking anchor with an href attribute. I usually right click to see if there's an "open in new tab" option, and anything that's an Anchor tag with an href attribute says yes... and then in sweet Dicsourse, choosing open in a new tab almost always fails, with varying amounts of fail. I don't see how this isn't as taboo as putting the wrong doctype at the top of your page or nesting block elements inside of inline elements. For fuck's sake, you can still make it an Anchor tag if you leave the fucking href attribute blank because then the browser won't interpret it as a link. Making the element do shit on hover or have a link look&feel is what CSS is for. It gets even more hilarious when half the <a> tags on this site are then fucking styled as display:block; and then use javascript in an onclick - USE A MOTHERFUCKING DIV, THOSE COME WITH DISPLAY:BLOCK BUILT THE FUCK INTO THEM AND ARE CLEARLY WHAT YOU WANTED SINCE YOU THEN USED JS INSTEAD OF MAKING A WORKING LINK OUT OF THEM. </blakeyrant>



  • @Kuro said:

    At the end of my webprogramming-phase the W3C or whoever decides things like this felt the need to deprecate target="_blank" from links.

    Someone should tell W3C it's been deprecated, because it's still in the HTML5.1 draft

    In fact, by the HTML spec, not having a href attribute in an <a> tag indicates it's a placeholder, so using JS in the onclick to navigate without having a href would be against spec


  • :belt_onion:

    @Spencer said:

    In fact, by the HTML spec, not having a href attribute in an <a> tag indicates it's a placeholder, so using JS in the onclick to navigate without having a href would be against spec

    Interesting - then these javascript links should all be divs or spans IMO.

    Putting javascript:js; in the href is valid as well, but also breaks opening in a new tab. I try to avoid doing it, it just seems like it SHOULD be invalid to do that kind of shit when onclick does the same damn thing without jacking up the browser's context menu.

    --edit: 1 exception - if my page is a single-page app where there is absolutely zero navigation to be done, ever, then I'd be ok with javascript:; in links or whatever because the user isn't expecting to ever go somewhere else.



  • Agreed. Possibly the only place I'd consider <a> perimissable without affecting navigation is, for example in Discourse, the cancel and << hide preview links when composing a reply (there are a couple of others, but these demonstrate my intention precisely).



  • I think what we really need is to ditch the 'onEvent' model, or at least expand it to include 'asProperty's, like 'asLink'. It's really lame when you have a table of data, and the rows are "ought" to be links. There is no good solution.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @chubertdev said:

    What, like how Ctrl/Shift + clicking on your avatar in the upper right corner doesn't behave as expected?

    Fun fact is that I don't really mind that particular thing as much because at least it doesn't confuse me. It might sound weird but even though I know it's designed as a link it a) is just an image of my avatar and b) it still opens the menu. It doesn't open a new webpage with the wrong content. It's kinda how I expect these Dropdown-menus to work. Not that they are good, but at least they don't feel like they are doing everything wrong.

    @chubertdev said:

    They use separate processes so that if one crashes, it doesn't crash the browser. This is why I don't use Firefox and its one process.

    Yeah, I get the advantage of that and it ultimately makes a lot of sense... my Taskmanager is not able to group them together (win 8 standard taskmanager) and with me opening topics like "how many tabs does your browser sport" it makes the taskmanager really bloatet.

    @darkmatter said:

    For fuck's sake, you can still make it an Anchor tag if you leave the fucking href attribute blank because then the browser won't interpret it as a link

    I might be remembering wrong and it might have changed but my memory tells me Safari had REALLY big problems when you left out the href in an a. Thats the reason for the
    [code]Link[/code]
    There was also
    [code]Link[/code]
    but that one obviously has it's own troubles and still won't support new-tab if I understand it right.

    @darkmatter said:

    USE A MOTHERFUCKING DIV, THOSE COME WITH DISPLAY:BLOCK BUILT THE FUCK INTO THEM AND ARE CLEARLY WHAT YOU WANTED SINCE YOU THEN USED JS INSTEAD OF MAKING A WORKING LINK OUT OF THEM.

    I tought using divs for links was a terrible idea because vision impared people who use screen-readers get different context for them? I have never used one of them so I can't verify this but if it's true, your blakeyrant might be a target for @blakeyrat to rant about 😃

    @Spencer said:

    Someone should tell W3C it's been deprecated, because it's still in the HTML5.1 draft

    Thats interesting. Did they just revert it after some time? Or put it in there in error? Pretty sure the deprecation came at the end of HTML4

    @darkmatter said:

    Putting javascript:js; in the href is valid as well,

    I see you already stated what I replied to further up in my post... oh well.

    @Captain said:

    I think what we really need is to ditch the 'onEvent' model, or at least expand it to include 'asProperty's, like 'asLink'. It's really lame when you have a table of data, and the rows are "ought" to be links. There is no good solution.

    Tbh. I don't really understand your problem.
    Create a table and set the data as links and be done with it? Or do you want the whole row to link to the same place? I mean besides still setting every text inside as a link (to the same place).
    I can't imagine a situation where that would be useful, though.

    Filed Under: I got Leader without reading the Likes thread.... I don't even



  • FYI: target="_blank" was deprecated in XHTML 1.0 Transitional and removed in XHTML 1.0 Strict but the wisdom of this was observd.



  • @Kuro said:

    @Spencer said:
    Someone should tell W3C it's been deprecated, because it's still in the HTML5.1 draft

    Thats interesting. Did they just revert it after some time? Or put it in there in error? Pretty sure the deprecation came at the end of HTML4

    It's apparently still a valid frame target name in HTML 4

    @Arantor said:

    FYI: target="_blank" was deprecated in XHTML 1.0 Transitional and removed in XHTML 1.0 Strict but the wisdom of this was observd.

    Hmm, ok. It still seems to be a valid enumeration for FrameTargets in XHTML1.1, but that's the only mention of "_blank" in the spec shugs



  • Of course it was valid in 1998. It was only the later XHTML that didn't like it.


  • :belt_onion:

    @Kuro said:

    I tought using divs for links was a terrible idea because vision impared people who use screen-readers get different context for them? I have never used one of them so I can't verify this but if it's true, your blakeyrant might be a target for @blakeyrat to rant about
    That would be terribly meta.

    Maybe we're bitching at the wrong people. Maybe it's the browser makers that should get with the times and check links for whether they are actually links and stop giving new tab options where they are not usable!



  • @Kuro said:

    Or put it in there in error? Pretty sure the deprecation came at the end of HTML4

    Did HTML 4 "end"? What the heck does that mean?

    Look, kiddy. When HTML 4 "ended" (to use your nonsense terminology), the W3C went off into lala-land and decided everybody must use XHTML2 in strict mode, which no doubt deprecated TARGET="_blank" just as it deprecated everything fun or interesting about HTML. That's why HTML5 had to be developed by a splinter group that said, "hey W3C? You guys are OFF YOUR FUCKING ROCKER!"


  • :belt_onion:

    @Kuro said:

    I tought using divs for links was a terrible idea because vision impared people who use screen-readers get different context for them? I have never used one of them so I can't verify this but if it's true, your blakeyrant might be a target for @blakeyrat to rant about

    Thinking about this some more - it depends on what you're doing with the "link". In the case of Dicsourse, these are real links being done by javacript, which is completely retarded and should never be done that way. Just put the link in the HREF and leave it the hell alone.

    What I was referring to when I said to use a div or span is when javascript is being run for the purpose of doing on-screen manipulations/ajax, not as a substitute for a regular link. When they're ubiquitous icons like the hamburger, it's easier to tell that the link is faked, but they still shouldn't be links, because they're not links.



  • @darkmatter said:

    For fuck's sake, you can still make it an Anchor tag if you leave the fucking href attribute blank because then the browser won't interpret it as a link

    To be fair, couldn't browsers easily detect when the href is "#" or "javascript: ..." and refuse to open in a new tab as well?



  • @Kuro said:

    There is no "Rant"-category

    Feature request...



  • @anonymous234 said:

    Feature request...

    This is TDWTF where pretty much everything is either a rant or merely leading up to it, especially if the great and worldly wise @blakeyrat deigns to bestow his wisdom upon us.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    that is not always true. Some topic are derailed before they can start to get ranty. Or are simply too long to qualify for the rant category (looking at the like-thread).

    Filed Under: Feature-Request: Rant-Category and the ability to put topics in multiple categories!


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @anonymous234 said:

    To be fair, couldn't browsers easily detect when the href is "#" or "javascript: ..." and refuse to open in a new tab as well?

    This sounds like more of the same, just more complicated.



  • @anonymous234 said:

    To be fair, couldn't browsers easily detect when the href is "#" or "javascript: ..." and refuse to open in a new tab as well?

    In-page #anchor should not refuse to open in a new tab, obviously.



  • But it's how HTML works. Authors write crappy code, browsers do their best effort to fix it. It's in the standard.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    I'm just saying that I don't necessarily see that as fixing anything. I'd rather get a duplicate tab than nothing, because then I don't know WTF is going on. Is the site bogged down? Broken? Browser locked up?


  • BINNED

    @anonymous234 said:

    To be fair, couldn't browsers easily detect when the href is "#" or "javascript: ..." and refuse to open in a new tab as well?

    Hey, I had a system that used #!s and opening in new tab worked properly.

    I upgraded it to the history API now, but it's doable. Browsers doing what you suggest would break that as well.



  • Create a table and set the data as links and be done with it? Or do you want the whole row to link to the same place? I mean besides still setting every text inside as a link (to the same place).

    The point is that "linking", the way it's implemented in HTML, isn't a semantic notion. It's entirely structural. There's no reason why only some kinds of elements should be linkable.

    I thought your rant was about consistency. As it stands, the developer has to abuse HTML and Javascript to make very reasonable designs.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    But I get the consistency of "a link will probably always be text or an image". To me it seems your approach of "everything could be a link" would make all these devs - that are currently work against the system to create their weird twisted way of doing things - now work within the system that empowers them to screw with the rules of a consistent web experience.

    I would not even mind it if a few websites did things their way if it actually made sense all the time. Discourse is kind of proof that that is not the case.
    Like, if you had a table and the only logical way for it to interact was to have every row link and you enabled that with Javascript (on this one table) then yeah, go with it. Rules are made to be broken.
    If you entire Website is a broken mess of inconsitency and weird UI-choices that completely rape the system they are in then no, please don't go with it.

    Filed Under: Screw the rules, I know Javascript



  • I'm saying the rules are going to be broken anyway. And it will be done badly, because using an onclick is cheaper/easier than doing it right and responding to all of the events.

    What is the other option to build a table like that?

    Using divs/spans to emulate a table? That's bad because it doesn't encode the right semantics. (Instead of declaring, "this is tabular data", you're saying "this is freeform data")

    I do appreciate that you're not saying it isn't worthwhile to build the table. I'm just saying that when somebody does decide to do it, it will probably be done badly, because the tools aren't available to do it right.


  • :belt_onion:

    @boomzilla said:

    I'm just saying that I don't necessarily see that as fixing anything. I'd rather get a duplicate tab than nothing, because then I don't know WTF is going on. Is the site bogged down? Broken? Browser locked up?

    It's not that it should give you nothing, it's that the options in the right click menu should not include new tab. I suppose middle clicking would give you nothing, but isn't that what it does when you middle click any other random thing in a webpage that is not a link?


  • :belt_onion:

    Interestingly, they made it where middle clicking your profile on a post opens your profile in a new tab, but left clicking pops up an in-page box that includes a link to the profile.
    This is acceptable behavior as well, because the middle-click does something at least somewhat expected.

    Middle-click on reply and it goes nowhere, you see that clearly you can't open a reply in a new window. Seems intuitive enough to me. Everything where the link won't actually work unless javascript is allowed to hijack it should work like the Reply button here does.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @darkmatter said:

    I suppose middle clicking would give you nothing, but isn't that what it does when you middle click any other random thing in a webpage that is not a link?

    Something like that. I guess we're back to the user knowing fuck-all about what is or isn't actually a link by simply looking at a page.



  • @Kuro said:

    Fun fact is that I don't really mind that particular thing as much because at least it doesn't confuse me. It might sound weird but even though I know it's designed as a link it a) is just an image of my avatar and b) it still opens the menu. It doesn't open a new webpage with the wrong content. It's kinda how I expect these Dropdown-menus to work. Not that they are good, but at least they don't feel like they are doing everything wrong.

    The thing is, Ctrl/Shift + Click is how web navigation works these days, and Discourse doesn't properly support it.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    Maybe I need to clarify this by using another example. And it might sound like I defend Discourse but please read until the end before you flame me for it.
    There have been "Interactive" elements in HTML for a while now. <select> for example gives you a dropdown box no matter if you hold down Ctrl or not. I expect it to work that way and surely it does.
    Now on the top right we have 4 elements. One of them is the Burger-Icon that people recognize as an icon that opens a menu. The other elements are right next to it so it doesn't take long to accept that they behave the same way but needed a different picture to be distinguishable.
    ^ this makes sense ^

    Now my example from before comes into play.
    Say, you accepted these Icons on the top-right to be dropdowns that ignore your Ctrl like any select-dropdown would. Here you have options. The problem comes from inconsistencies here. Because... let's face it, most of the options here actually open a new tab when ctrl+clicked. But right below Badges (which works as intended) are is a link called "Keyboard Shortcuts". From clicking it normally I get why it won't work with Ctrl+Click, because it's actually a toggle for an overlay. Why it is that way, I don't know. But it doesn't work in the context to it's neighbours.
    ^ this doesn't make sense ^

    The problem here is - as so often - that the devs try to be clever and use an overlay. In the old days, this would have been a new window, probably and a new window is tabable (or makes a new window anyway, even though deprecation (which also has been deproven by the replies in this topic)).

    Filed Under: I am not sure where this reply is even heading so I'll stop right here and hope you are satisfied with it :D


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    You could open a new topic and ask this question to see what this comunity can come up with. There are some bright people in here that program tables for a living, probably.

    I can't tell you how I would tackle the table problem but as I said before I don't see any usecase for it, yet. This makes finding a solution a bit harder.

    Filed Under: I am dumb so better ask everybody else



  • Exactly, it's important to have a distinction between links and controls. A link "takes you somewhere else", a control interacts with the current page. Links can still be handled with Javascript, provided that you single-click them and have javascript enabled, but should always point to an address that actually takes you there when opened in a new tab.

    Controls OTOH should ignore any attempts to open in a new tab because that makes no sense. So the problem is implementing them (maybe HTML could use a <clickablethingie> tag? Wait, just realized that's what <button> means) and (very important!) making them look different from links.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    Liked, because I do believe you are actually completely correct.

    Filed Under: This could be considered a +1



  • @anonymous234 said:

    Exactly, it's important to have a distinction between links and controls. A link "takes you somewhere else", a control interacts with the current page. Links can still be handled with Javascript, provided that you single-click them and have javascript enabled, but should always point to an address that actually takes you there when opened in a new tab.

    Controls OTOH should ignore any attempts to open in a new tab because that makes no sense. So the problem is implementing them (maybe HTML could use a <clickablethingie> tag? Wait, just realized that's what <button> means) and (very important!) making them look different from links.

    So does that mean Discourse is Doing It Wrongâ„¢ because it treats the avatar as a link instead of a control?



  • If you're referring to the avatar at the top right (which is so helpfully tooltipped as "Avatar"), yes, then doubly so because, of the 4 options in the top right, all 4 are links, and the notifications option doesn't handle middle-click so it opens the current post in a new tab, but the other three handle the middle-click and open the menu the same as left-clicking.

    ...

    Also, along the bad tooltip front, the tooltip for the hamburger menu says "go to another topic list or category", but only the "Latest", "Categories", and the actual category links follow in that. The other three options don't go to topic lists or categories.



  • @ChaosTheEternal said:

    If you're referring to the avatar at the top right (which is so helpfully tooltipped as "Avatar"), yes, then doubly so because, of the 4 options in the top right, all 4 are links, and the notifications option doesn't handle middle-click so it opens the current post in a new tab, but the other three handle the middle-click and open the menu the same as left-clicking.

    ...

    Also, along the bad tooltip front, the tooltip for the hamburger menu says "go to another topic list or category", but only the "Latest", "Categories", and the actual category links follow in that. The other three options don't go to topic lists or categories.

    Very little thought was put into the usability of even the smallest parts of Discourse.



  • @anonymous234 said:

    [links] should always point to an address that actually takes you there when opened in a new tab [even if left-click does something special].

    YES



  • @ChaosTheEternal said:

    but the other three handle the middle-click and open the menu the same as left-clicking.

    ?

    Middle-click on the topright avatar takes me to the curent page.


  • BINNED

    @dhromed said:

    Middle-click on the topright avatar takes me to the curent page.

    Only opens the menu for me in Chrome. But the current page behavior is correct as well from the browser's standpoint, since href seems to be #



  • It wasn't for me when I'd posted that. Middle-clicking was acting the same as left-clicking, except on the notifications link button.

    I tested from Chrome only. Maybe the behavior is different between browsers?

    I'll check it again when I get on my computer later. I can only check Chrome and IE at home, though.



  • @ChaosTheEternal said:

    Maybe the behavior is different between browsers?

    Clearly.

    I don't understand why Chrome would route middleclick to leftclick.
    ALT IDEA: Chrome's engine allows webdevs to do this, and Jeff did it.


  • :belt_onion:

    @dhromed said:

    I don't understand why Chrome would route middleclick to leftclick.ALT IDEA: Chrome's engine allows webdevs to do this, and Jeff did it.

    IE11 middle click profile open the menu.



  • @Kuro said:

    Addendum: Oh since I am on the topic.... combining the last 2 things. I hate that Discourse Ajax-loads shit on my phone. I can never tell if I missclicked or it is just loading things (and I don't mean scrolling down because swiping gives me a feedback AND there is the "loading" bar.What I mean is for example clicking on the header to go back to the main-forum-page. I don't get a loading bar, there is NOTHING indicating that I am now going back to the mainpage. And it still takes 5 minutes so I can never be sure.... Seriously, that frustrates me!

    This frustrates me too. I'm assuming your 5 minute claim is hyperbole, but I can easily be waiting 20 to 30 seconds before a link that I've clicked actually causes a new page to display on mobile. For lots of the links, there's no visual indication that anything is happening.

    Aside from that, my (WP8) phone likes to jump to a different location a split second after the content has loaded. It'll often flash several times before choosing a location to stabilise on, and this is often many posts (20+) earlier than the first new post. If there are, say, 30 new posts, I'm now at a location way before the first new post, with no easy way to get to the correct point, other than scrolling down page after page and visually inspecting which posts I've already read. This doesn't happen every time, but coupled with the slow load times, it makes the site barely usable.

    There seems to be a bug with notifications on my phone too. I'll get the blue circle to say that I have a new notification, click the speech bubble and the notification list will display but only show notifications I've already seen. No amount of refreshing or browsing the site will get the list to update and reflect the new notification. I've tested that the notification is legitimate by viewing the site on a computer.

    ANOTHER thing is that in the mobile view, you can't tell who a reply is aimed at if the replier hasn't included quoted text from the original post. There's no excuse for this; even showing just the icon of the original poster would be a massive improvement.

    I've pretty much given up on using Discourse on my phone, which is crazy given that they've clearly put effort into developing a mobile friendly version. I'm sure people will claim that WP8 or IE (11 I think) are to blame, but other sites and forums work just fine.



  • @Keith said:

    given that they've clearly put effort into developing a mobile friendly version

    The problem is, the mobile version feels like an afterthought, not an intentional plan. If it was intentional, you wouldn't be stating that Android is a bad platform and the only good experience should be on only Safari on iOS.



  • @ChaosTheEternal said:

    the mobile version feels like an afterthought

    If that. All they've done, far as I can tell, is make the javascript less brutal to the connection.



  • @tufty said:

    If that. All they've done, far as I can tell, is make the javascript less brutal to the connection.

    Now come on, they've also removed some useful information and buttons.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @Keith said:

    This frustrates me too. I'm assuming your 5 minute claim is hyperbole, but I can easily be waiting 20 to 30 seconds before a link that I've clicked actually causes a new page to display on mobile. For lots of the links, there's no visual indication that anything is happening.

    Here is where you HOPE it is an hyperbole and I have the sad job of bursting that bubble...

    @Keith said:

    There seems to be a bug with notifications on my phone too. I'll get the blue circle to say that I have a new notification, click the speech bubble and the notification list will display but only show notifications I've already seen. No amount of refreshing or browsing the site will get the list to update and reflect the new notification. I've tested that the notification is legitimate by viewing the site on a computer.

    I found out that giong back to entering the URL and submitting this fixes the problem (reloading does nothing... I blamed the cache somewhere

    Filed Under: I quoted you so you know I was talking to you... hope your notification updated :D


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