Mobile Discourse (please be constructive)



  • We do a lot of complaining about Discourse, (recently) especially on mobile, so I've created thia thread to have a place to dump constructive analysis of our gripes.

    • no ranting here, please.

    I'll start.

    Problem: trying to edit a post, or paste something, is nigh on impossible on ipad because the composer jumps around too much.

    analysis: it seens as if one screen size is reported by safari, the compaer uses this to place itself at the bottom of the window/screen, and then ipad slaps on a keyboard, which changes the window size, at which point the composer tries to adapt. A few turns later both Discourse and safari are so confused about the position of the composer so when you try to tap in the compser neither knows what you want, telling you to bugger off while they continue to dance around each other and the keyboard.

    I have found that turning the ipad on its side gives less "wiggle room" for the composer, and then it is actually possible to move the cursor around in the edit box (or paste something).

    suggestion: place the composer at the top of the window instead. This position is much more stable and less likely to cause any problems. This randomly happened to me once in the past few days and it worked like a charm.



  • Another one (maybe just me): I can't find any backtick symbol on my ipad's keyboard, so I can't quote code properly.

    suggestion: button in the toolbar or an alias key. A triple colon or something similar would work?


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Mikael_Svahnberg said:

    on ipad because the composer jumps around too much

    You may want to start hardware-specific threads....


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Mikael_Svahnberg said:

    I can't find any backtick symbol on my ipad's keyboard, so I can't quote code properly.

    ?



  • Issues I currently have on mobile:

    Clicking links (usually to go into threads, or the logo in the top left) only works about 50% of the time. The other 50% I'm left with a blank screen. At this point I refresh but it only reloads the page I was in, so I have to wait for that page to reload, then "click" again and wait for that page to load. I've a kind of workaround for this, I now press and hold links and use the "open" option. This has a much better success rate.

    Upon entering a thread it scrolls up 10-20 posts, waits a few seconds then scrolls up some more. The worst part of this is that if I scroll down too fast Discourse actually scrolls me up, so I can end up ~100 posts "higher" than where I should be.

    The 2 issues above are a real 🚧 to how I like to use the site, ie dip into a few threads at a time reading the latest 2-3 posts. I now tend to use mobile to catch up on long individual threads.

    The upload option when posting hasn't worked for a few months.

    On the tablet, if I'm c+p from a site on another tab, when I tab back to discourse the whole page reloads, which isn't a quick process anyway. When the page does eventually reload it's a lottery as to whether the reply I've started typing is still there or not.



  • Modal popups when using desktop mode on a phone are placed almost off-screen and are near-indismissable.



  • @Mikael_Svahnberg said:

    no ranting here, please.

    Impossible.

    Also, quoting is still broken, random jumps are still a thing, and history tracking occasionally makes "back" take you to the very same page you were on (and then 2 pages back at once when you press it again), but those - and more - issues have been raised multiple times now and didn't get fixed, so I don't really get what the point of this thread is.

    Oh, and the composer will sometimes refuse to scroll, but that I haven't pinpointed.



  • On my Windows phone when you open a topic with unread posts it seems to load each unread post (or at least the unread posts of whatever chunk it has picked to load) one by one in reverse order, pushing each one down with each new one.

    So, assuming that I've read up to post x, and it's grabbing 20 posts at a time, on my screen I'll see post x and underneath that will be post x + 20. This bottom post will be replaced after half a second with post x + 19, then with post x + 18, etc., meaning that I get to see the avatar, poster name, and first few words of the next 20 posts before I can continue reading.


  • Banned

    my plan is for a full screen composer, its the only way to solve this stuff on mobile, position fixed is not helping us here



  • @sam said:

    full screen composer

    So you can't even look at the post you're replying to?

    Especially since I still need to rewrite posts into quotes on mobile because I get two words at best when selecting...



  • Also on i-pad, I can't even select the category, because the composer goes crazy once you open the drop-down.


  • Banned

    You would collapse the composer to look at the posts, even on the iPhone 6 I can barely see 1 line while composing text.



  • Thanks!



  • Ok. It was worth a shot anyway.



  • Gentlepeople! May I ask of you to also include an analysis of your gripes, otherwise there is no added value to this thread.



  • I can't give constructive input because I gave up even attempting to use Discourse on mobile. After about 3 patches of worse and worse and worse performance on my Windows Phone 8, I just couldn't take it anymore.



  • Interestingly, I managed to quote you this morning on windows phone, purely by luck, on only my third attempt at selecting text! Improvement!



  • Nokia Lumia Denim 630 Windows 8 Phone, bundled IE

    Cannot resize drop down menus, and they don't repaint automatically -meaning if I have 1/3 (width) of it in portrait, I still have 1/3 of it in landscape



  • Analysis?

    Which drop downs are you referring to? I don't have any resizable drop-downs on ipad...



  • the one that bugs me the most is the one you click for categories / topic lists. Perhaps dropdown is the wrong technical description



  • Ah. That one is scrollable for me.

    ... Which is a minor :wtf: since it is inconsistent with every other drop-down I've ever seen.



  • So that's a WONT_FIX then? :trollface: :rofl:



  • Actually it's a width thing. vertical scrolling is not the issue. Don't force me to try and video the results :p



  • I am assuming everything is a WONT_FIX, unless otherwise explicitly stated. I just thought it would be nice to use our formidable and highly trained minds to do something constructive for a change.

    ... I also think, perhaps naively, that a properly analysed problem with a suggested solution stands a better chance at becoming 'otherwise explicitly stated'.



  • @Mikael_Svahnberg said:

    use our formidable and highly trained minds to do something constructive for a change.

    YMBNH



  • Problem: apparently mobile Discourse disables zoom, which is really annoying because I kinda like being able to zoom.

    Workaround: go to your browser's settings and enable the option named "Force enable zoom" or similar. Seems to work fine for me.

    Possible root cause: the developers were having too many problems getting everything to position properly on mobile and decided to simply disable zoom.

    Suggested solution to the root cause: instead of trying to build a dynamic forum "for the next 10 years" with every experimental javascript framework you can find, stick to old HTML features that are known to work well in every platform, including mobile.



  • @anonymous234 said:

    apparently mobile Discourse disables zoom

    I think they do something particularly weird on Windows Phone. I don't think I'm able to manually zoom in (haven't tried very recently) because it automatically undoes it. But sometimes I get zoomed in enough that scrolling becomes slightly harder and the UI breaks, and I can zoom out to somewhat fix it, but the UI stays broken until I load a different page.



  • Is that because 'disable zoom' works differently on win mobile, or because Discourse uses a non-standard implementation of it?

    I am asking because I haven't done any proper web development since gopher, and am thus assuming it is a simple toggle in some CSS standard or other that disables zoom...



  • @anonymous234 said:

    apparently mobile Discourse disables zoom

    I may be partially to blame for that (though, to be fair, I wasn't entirely arguing for no zooming ever):

    https://what.thedailywtf.com/t/layout-breaks-on-higher-zoomlevels-lower-window-width/897/9?u=chaostheeternal

    Specifically, look at who liked that post.



  • @Mikael_Svahnberg said:

    'disable zoom' works differently on win mobile

    Possibly. Mobile zoom is (AFAIK) supposed to be controlled through a <meta name="viewport"> tag. This is what Discourse has:

    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, minimum-scale=1.0, maximum-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes">
    

    They say the minimum and maximum zoom level is 1, which should effectively disable zooming, but they specify the user can zoom by saying "user- scalable=yes". Normally, I'd think you'd either do the min and max zoom at 1 or say "user-scalable=no".



  • This ought to be easily testable for someone with the right access. With a little luck, other challenges are ripple-effects of this.

    ... @anyone ?


  • Banned

    @blakeyrat said:

    I gave up even attempting to use Discourse on mobile

    A full screen composer will help heaps here.

    I just noticed the peekabo thing and topic shifting

    Replied and composed on Windows phone 8


  • FoxDev

    @sam said:

    Replied and composed on Windows phone 8

    Glad those devices are helping you out.


  • area_can

    Does the mobile version of the site hang for about a second or two while loading threads? I've taken to browsing the 'slow device' version of the site on mobile since it loads almost instantly.



  • So what are you going to do to un-break desktop mode on vertical screens?


  • Banned

    Pray to the lords at Apple that they fix position fixed one day in Safari on the iPad.

    I am willing to sacrifice a few ancient iPhones and three grapes for the cause.



  • Are you sure you can afford to sacrifice as many as three grapes?



  • @sam said:

    my plan is for a full screen composer, its the only way to solve this stuff on mobile, position fixed is not helping us here

    Would a quote button be added to the composer then?


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @abarker said:

    Would a quote button be added to the composer then?

    Or a multiquote button per post which would need to be clicked before using such a button, a-la vBulletin e.g...

    👿



  • @PJH said:

    Or a multiquote button per post which would need to be clicked before using such a button, a-la vBulletin e.g...

    You could overload the admin select menu and make it TL4+ only ...


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @aliceif said:

    You could overload the admin select menu and make it TL4+ only ...

    I'll have to get back to you on that one..


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