Blakeyrat pointing out NodeBB problems
-
is a 
-
@RaceProUK Right; so what media queries should it have set?
BTW, looked up the criteria which is, in its entirety:
handheld
Intended for handheld devices (typically small screen, limited bandwidth).God I hate the web.
A Surface 3 at, what, 10.8" has a larger screen than virtually every home computer before 1993 or so. You can't just say "small", you have to define this shit.
-
@ben_lubar said:
Edit: Let's make this more precise: any device that has a touchscreen as its main input method is a handheld.
Pictured: a 6' long handheld computer
-
@ben_lubar even an AIO touchscreen desktop?
-
@blakeyrat would you disagree with me if I said that device should get the mobile layout on this forum?
-
@blakeyrat said:
Right; so what media queries should it have set?
For a phone or small tablet (e.g. 7")? Both
screenandhandheld.
For a desktop or laptop?screenonly.For a 10"-12" tablet? …I'll be honest, this one is a tough choice. It should have
screenobviously, but should it also sayhandheld? At that size, they can be handheld, but they can also be more akin to a laptop. I guess you could sayhandheldandscreenwhen you don't have an external keyboard attached, andscreenonly when you do, but then you run into the issue of websites completely changing their layout when you attach/detach the keyboard. So… I don;t know, to be honest.
-
@ben_lubar said:
Edit: Let's make this more precise: any device that has a touchscreen as its main input method is a handheld.
Ah. So the Surface Pro is still both. Does that make a phone with an attached keyboard not a handheld? Honestly, I think the only way to deal with this is to ask the user.
-
@dcon said:
Honestly, I think the only way to deal with this is to ask the user.
The whole point of responsive design is so you don't have to ask the user. For people like us, it's not an issue to say "Yes, I want the desktop site, and to hell with anything else!". But for your Average Jane, all they want is to see the dancing kittens, and anything that stands in their way, even if it's meant to help them, is just going to piss them off.
-
I'm not saying don't make a best guess. Just let me override it if it guesses wrong.
edit: Since in this case, 'wrong' is entirely in the eye of the beholder.
-
@ben_lubar said:
@blakeyrat would you disagree with me if I said that device should get the mobile layout on this forum?
I would argue that you should be able to choose which interface it gets, which is also what I'd be happy with here.
Ooo, ooo, I just remembered we have a 32" "handheld" computer in the lobby of my work building, embedded into the wall. Now that's handheld!
-
@RaceProUK said:
The whole point of responsive design is so you don't have to ask the user.
Then it's a stupid concept.
@RaceProUK said in Blakeyrat pointing out NodeBB problems:
For people like us, it's not an issue to say "Yes, I want the desktop site, and to hell with anything else!". But for your Average Jane, all they want is to see the dancing kittens, and anything that stands in their way, even if it's meant to help them, is just going to piss them off.
Except this is a FORUM, and the "tablet experience" is VASTLY inferior to the desktop experience. There's no preview pane, there's no way to multiple quote, etc.
This isn't some landing page to show off a new robot vacuum. If it were, I'd have zero complaints right now because the mobile view wouldn't grossly detract from the site.
Right now you're wrongly serving those naive users the mobile version, and being naive users THEY MIGHT NOT EVEN KNOW A DESKTOP VERSION EXISTS! So you're basically shouting at them with a bullhorn, "this forum software doesn't have a preview pane!" That's the first impression you're making. Is that the first impression you want? No. Not unless you're stupid.
I mean, isn't that last paragraph obvious? Stop and think about what you're saying here.
EDIT: you're also making the strong assumption that "advanced' users keep their browsers maximized all the time, and "naive" users do not, which is a crazy bullshit assumption to be making and almost certainly DEAD wrong.
-
@RaceProUK said:
Yes, I want the desktop site, and to hell with anything else!
I know this is not your point, but Chrome on my phone has a "Request desktop version" button. Which right now doesn't load a Desktop experience due to the screen width.
Filed Under: Just pointing that out
-
@Kuro I believe that's intended for sites that maintain a separate 'desktop' and 'mobile' version
-
@RaceProUK Might as well be the case. But I found the similarities between your words and the button intersting. Hence I wanted to point it out.
Filed Under: The button is broken on NodeBB. Let's file a bug report at Google :P
-
@blakeyrat said:
I mean, isn't that last paragraph obvious? Stop and think about what you're saying here.
I'm not saying it's an ideal solution; hell, I'm not even saying it's a good solution. But it's the solution we have, and it's what we have to work with until something better comes along.
@blakeyrat said:
you're also making the strong assumption that "advanced' users keep their browsers maximized all the time, and "naive" users do not, which is a crazy bullshit assumption to be making and almost certainly DEAD wrong.
On the contrary, I think it's far more likely that naïve users will have their browser maximised; after all, they're more likely to be doing just one thing (like watching cat videos on YouTube), and the responsive stuff will work better as a result. For us advanced users though, we're a lot more likely to use our browsers in unusual or unexpected ways, and it's then that the assumptions break down. Frameworks like Bootstrap are designed with the naïve user in mind, because there's far more of those than advanced users. Yes, it means we sometimes get shafted, but remember that we're also doing things that the majority of users don't do.
You and I both know that the modern Web is a tangled mess of languages, standards, and frameworks that almost always end up fighting with each other. I wish it was better, I really do, but we eventually have to address the reality of the situation, and make do.
-
@RaceProUK said:
I'm not saying it's an ideal solution; hell, I'm not even saying it's a good solution. But it's the solution we have, and it's what we have to work with until something better comes along.
Because it's like a wild animal that just comes along every once in a while? That's how software development works? You don't bother trying to make your product better, you just wait until "something comes along"?
Feh.
@RaceProUK said:
Frameworks like Bootstrap are designed with the naïve user in mind, because there's far more of those than advanced users.
They're designed broken. There's no other way to say it. I have no idea why you're defending this bug, but it is a bug.
@RaceProUK said:
Yes, it means we sometimes get shafted, but remember that we're also doing things that the majority of users don't do.
Prove it. With evidence, not ass-pulls.
What is the "thing" I'm doing that you think the majority of users don't? Owning a desktop computer? With a 1080p monitor? Using the browser zoom feature? Using Chrome? Which thing is it?
Building useful software isn't pulling assumptions out of your ass, it's research and hard work to discover the approach that works better. Work that the NodeBB team obviously has not done.
-
@blakeyrat It's clear you're not interested in discussing this like a mature adult; I'm out
-
@RaceProUK Finally.
-
@julianlam said:
expect the composer to behave similarly on both portrait and landscape,
I feel like this is the same bug as @Blake91's bug: you shouldn't have two completely different modes for mobile and desktop. Responsive design means having the same elements just reflow differently depending on the size of the screen. If you've got a massive step change happening at any resolution, you're going to get complaints like this.
-
This post is deleted!
-
@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.
@mikehurley said:
Many sites have a "use desktop version" or "use mobile version" links. That seems to work well from what I've seen. Especially since many mobile sites suck and Android is more than capable of showing the desktop version well in my experience.
That seems like the best option. Store the preference per-browser in a cookie, make sure the "switch to mobile version" link is accessible in desktop mode on mobile devices, default to desktop.
Best way of figuring out whether the user wants the mobile or desktop version is to just ask. Hell, just shove a huge modal in the user's face the first time around if there's no other way to do it, and it's still better than trying to guess. Because the worst thing you can do is to guess wrong and provide no way for the user to correct the software.
@RaceProUK said:
For a 10"-12" tablet? …
...fix the goddamn standard is the correct answer. If you want to ask whether the device has a touchscreen or not, just name the damn queries "touchscreen" and "no-touchscreen". Because seriously, this is silly - web designers don't care whether you're holding the device in your hand, they care whether a) the touch based interface is viable, and b) the screen is big enough to fit the content.
Instead they get "handheld", which doesn't imply the presence or absence of a touchscreen, no "handheld" which tells you nothing at all, "screen" which tells you nothing at all, and no "screen" which tells you to just give up on the UI and focus on arias since apparently you're dealing with some sort of accessibility text-to-speech device?
-
@Maciejasjmj said:
...fix the goddamn standard is the correct answer. If you want to ask whether the device has a touchscreen or not, just name the damn queries "touchscreen" and "no-touchscreen".
Would help a lot, though
screenshould really refer to actual physical screen size, not resolution. As in, on a 24'' 1080p touchscreen you might as well keep the desktop interface, the buttons will still be big enough to poke with your finger if you choose to do so. On a 5'' mobile phone screen that happens to be 1080p... yeah, a bit harder to pull of.
-
@Maciejasjmj said:
fix the goddamn standard is the correct answer
Funny you should say that…
Looks like CSS4 will separate media querying into coarse-grained media types like
screenandprint, and introduce a new second level of media features that will allow much finer-grained detection of exactly the sort of things needed to correctly determine whether that 1080p touchscreen is 4" or 40".it's just a shame it's still a work-in-progress. And based on the state CSS3 support in even the latest browsers, it'll probably be a good 10-15 years before it's practical to use the CSS4 media stuff.
-
This post is deleted!
-
@RaceProUK said:
And based on the state CSS3 support in even the latest browsers, it'll probably be a good 10-15 years before it's practical to use the CSS4 media stuff.
Yeah, you don't un-screw-up a screwed-up standard. It's been tried, it's been failed.
-
@blakeyrat said:
On a desktop computer, I NEVER want to see mobile mode. Ever. I never want to see it. Stop showing it to me, I do not want it, I never asked for it, showing it to me is wrong, stop doing it.
What part of "no one knows automagically that you're using a desktop but you" don't you understand?
@RaceProUK said:
And 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.
Exactly.
I also fail to see how it is a "Bug." though. It is working as intended - the intent being that if you use a retardedly small viewport then you get the retardedly small view. They don't care to deal with the OTHER headache you get from having to try to figure out how to render a 1600px(or whatever size it happens to be) wide view into some fools' effectively 800px of screen real estate.
For this specific case, the threads in this forum probably would look mostly okay at that size, but that isn't always going to be the case.
-
@Maciejasjmj said:
b) the screen is big enough to fit the content.
(And "big enough" needs to be measured in centimeters, NOT pixels.)
-
@darkmatter oh hey someone added some highlighting so i can see wtf thing the notification was trying to point me to. helpful. still makes nodeBB look retarded since it loaded me half a screen away from the thing that it was telling me to look at, but at least now I can find it without having to hover the anchor tags to see the post #s.
Why does nodeBB hide post#s like it's dicsourse?
-
@darkmatter said:
What part of "no one knows automagically that you're using a desktop but you" don't you understand?
It's not that I don't understand, it's that I don't care. I want shit to work. I don't care why it's broken.
@darkmatter said in Blakeyrat pointing out NodeBB problems:
It is working as intended - the intent being that if you use a retardedly small viewport then you get the retardedly small view.
1000 pixels wide is "retardedly small".
I... I don't even have a joke for that. It's so dumb. I'm just going to repeat it because goddamned.
-
@darkmatter said:
Why does nodeBB hide post#s like it's dicsourse?
In what way? The newlevator is in the header, and the post number is in the hyperlink that is the timestamp; aside from being in different places, it's the same as
-
@Maciejasjmj said:
Yeah, you don't un-screw-up a screwed-up standard. It's been tried, it's been failed.
standards as designed by w3c are worthless bullshit, what is valuable is whatever works in all browsers. that's the defacto standard. it's also screwed up anyway
-
@darkmatter said:
For this specific case, the threads in this forum probably would look mostly okay at that size, but that isn't always going to be the case.
Yes, and it depends on a lot of variables. Screen size, resolution, available input devices, currently used input devices (if I'm using my tablet with type cover like a laptop right now, I'd rather have the desktop view, if I'm using it like a tablet, I'd rather have a more touch-oriented interface that won't break when half the screen is taken up by on-screen keyboard...)
It's hard to guess, so the best option is probably not to guess.
-
@blakeyrat said:
1000 pixels wide is "retardedly small"
It would be 1000 pixels... if you didn't zoom to 125%. Not sure how you expect to fit 1000px of content at 125% zoom into 1000px of screen. It has to start flowing or contracting sizes on things to fit in, and if anything was fixed width, it's just screwed.
-
@darkmatter said:
It would be 1000 pixels... if you didn't zoom to 125%.
I had to zoom because the font's too fucking small and my monitor at home is a lot further away from my face than this one at work.
@darkmatter said:
Not sure how you expect to fit 1000px of content at 125% zoom into 1000px of screen.
I don't expect that, but I also don't expect people like Ben L to tell me the value is 992 pixels when it's way bigger than that.
-
@RaceProUK said:
the post number is in the hyperlink
that's how dicsourse did it, which is hidden. Having to hover over post timestamps to figure out how close I am to the post # in the URL or to the post # the link CLAIMED to have sent me to is just stupid.
-
@darkmatter Want to know the most stupid thing? If he was using Firefox, IE, or Edge (i.e. not a WebKit browser), he'd see the behaviour he wants. The issue is ultimately a bug in WebKit's renderer and the way it calculates CSS pixels when browser zoom is on; i posted links further up that explain it better than I can.
-
@RaceProUK said:
If he was using Firefox, IE, or Edge (i.e. not a WebKit browser), he'd see the behaviour he wants.
Given the 1000px window, yeah.
But snapping the window to the edge on an HD monitor forces you into mobile view, and that's still horrible. I mean, I'd understand if the width was like, 500 pixels, and you literally couldn't fit things without the layout falling apart... but half the goddamn HD screen?
And fun thing is, if the cutoff was just slightly smaller, that forced mobile view wouldn't be an issue to almost anyone - since it's rare to have a free-floating window these days and manually manage its size, but common to have a window snapped to the side.
It's like a game having a minimum resolution requirement of 1366x775. If you just managed to cut seven measly rows of pixels, you'd have a ton of people with a very common 1366x768 resolution who could play where they previously couldn't.
-
@Maciejasjmj I wonder how they came up with those numbers, TBQH. Might be that they picked a common number like
1024and then just found the closest one divisible by 12 or something (Bootstrap, by default, has a 12 "column" layout concept).Also, those can actually be changed pretty easily. AFAIK, all themes are pulled in as less files, not CSS. Meaning, it should technically be possible to change a few variables there and then recompile them to CSS using those values, likely in git's post-pull hook so that the updated don't mess them up...
-
@RaceProUK said:
@darkmatter Want to know the most stupid thing? If he was using Firefox, IE, or Edge (i.e. not a WebKit browser), he'd see the behaviour he wants.
NO I WOULD NOT stop lying about that.
I thought you were leaving this thread. Get out.
-
@blakeyrat Have you tried it? Did you read the links I posted above that explain why it would work?
-
@Maciejasjmj said:
since it's rare to have a free-floating window these days and manually manage its size, but common to have a window snapped to the side.
Guess I'm a rare old coot... Almost all my windows are free floating (except Visual Studio which is full screen). And I never snap my windows.
-
@RaceProUK said:
@blakeyrat Have you tried it? Did you read the links I posted above that explain why it would work?
@blakeyrat said:
That's not a fix.
THE WIDTH OF THE BROWSER WINDOW IS IRRELEVANT.
Once more:
THE WIDTH OF THE BROWSER WINDOW IS IRRELEVANT.
On a desktop computer, I NEVER want to see mobile mode. Ever. I never want to see it. Stop showing it to me, I do not want it, I never asked for it, showing it to me is wrong, stop doing it.
That is the bug. Don't get sidetracked by some specific number of pixels.
I know you're functionally retarded, but try REALLY REALLY hard to absorb that quote.
No.
No don't respond yet.
Read it again. Read it slowly. Look up any words you don't know.
Ok, now-- wait! don't respond yet.
Take a deep breath.
Now read the quote again. Very slowly.
...
...
Ok?
Now respond.
-
@blakeyrat If you'd read the article I linked to, you'd know it's got nothing to do with the window width, but everything to do with how WebKit browsers calculate pixel size when zoom is enabled.
-
@RaceProUK Nope, you replied too quick. You didn't follow my directions. Try again.
EDIT: either that or you're now trying to make a brand new argument that Ben L was wrong when he told me there was a magic number of pixels that changed the window from normal to "mobile" view. Is that the case? Because if so you kind of shifted without a clutch and lost me.
-
@blakeyrat My argument has nothing to do with what Ben said; now go read the article I linked to, and you'll understand what I'm saying
-
@RaceProUK said:
@blakeyrat My argument has nothing to do with what Ben said; now go read the article I linked to, and you'll understand what I'm saying
You're still talking about the width of the window, which is irrelevant.
THE WIDTH OF THE WINDOW IS IRRELEVANT.
THE WIDTH OF THE WINDOW IS IRRELEVANT.
Say it with me:
THE WIDTH OF THE WINDOW IS IRRELEVANT.
The bug is that a person sitting at a desktop computer can see the mobile version at all. That is the bug. Absorb it into your tiny brain. I'm sick of repeating it.
-
@blakeyrat Well, if you want to keep throwing a tantrum that even a three-year-old would baulk at, then there really is no helping you
-
@RaceProUK You won't absorb the information, you won't get the fuck out of my thread, what else am I supposed to do except explain it to you like you're 3 years old? I'm sorry that you're so fucking stupid, but why are you insulting me as if your IQ of 6 is somehow my fault?
Jesus, you're intolerable. Next time you say you're going to get the fuck out of one of my threads, try not to be a fucking liar about it.
-
@blakeyrat I'm not sure which this is more, pathetic or hilarious :P
-
If you're "watching" a thread, the notifications you get when someone posts in the thread go away on their own before you even have a chance to check them.
