I can't read you, I've got a Banana for a phone October 29, 2010 7:39 PM   Subscribe

A few usability ponies for MoFi, please? I'd offer to code but I'm only so so and reluctant to stir unknown code. Alternatively, anyone have mobile navigation tips or app advice? A short phone-limited lazy SL previously .....

I'm actually typing this on the full site using a phone keypad. Just some thoughts in almost no particular order:

- bottom of the page jump or refresh link.

Its likely a limitation of my toy phone, but scrolling alllllll the way up to refresh a long and spirited discussion is somewhat cumbersome. Some sites have applets that quite fancily refresh automatically or tell you how many new posts are ready to refresh with (hrm on their full site, never interested enough it try mobile). I don't think an applet like that is needed - but a link to jump up or trigger a refresh at the bottom, please?

=== minor ui things ===

- read jobs.mefi

We can search, but not peruse.

- post questions

My phone can handle it, going to the full site, but can they all?

Argh, mind went blank. More sleep.

Thanks for suggestions or ponies
posted by tilde to Feature Requests at 7:39 PM (21 comments total)

Oh gosh, I had no idea about the monkeys ....
posted by tilde at 7:49 PM on October 29, 2010


I thought I was being clever with mobile filter ...
posted by tilde at 7:50 PM on October 29, 2010


It would be very cool if we could remove a thread from recent activity on the mobile style sheet.
posted by nomadicink at 8:02 PM on October 29, 2010 [1 favorite]


Wait, you're on an iphone? For scrolling, you can tap the top of the screen to scroll to the top in safari. Er...at least under the newest iOS you can anyways.
posted by juv3nal at 8:05 PM on October 29, 2010 [1 favorite]


A way to refresh without having to go up to the top of the screen (and thus losing my place) or backing out of the thread would be really great.

I mostly read metafilter on my iPhone.
posted by leahwrenn at 8:11 PM on October 29, 2010


Does anyone else experience glacial typing on the iPhone, but only here? I read it on the phone a lot, but can never comment because it takes forever to type a response.

1. Jury's out on whether my commenting or not is a bad thing.
2. I'm otherwise (on other sites and other apps) a fairly good typist on the device.
posted by nevercalm at 8:35 PM on October 29, 2010


Oh, and yes, you can tap to get to the top of the screen, but getting back down to the bottom...is there a quick way to do that? I haven't come across one...
posted by nevercalm at 8:36 PM on October 29, 2010


When I try to read Metafilter on my Android phone, I can see one page worth of questions and go into them, but I can't go to Older/Newer posts, and can't select on categories.
posted by canine epigram at 8:36 PM on October 29, 2010


bottom of the page jump or refresh link.

Please!
posted by popechunk at 8:43 PM on October 29, 2010


Have you seen the skip to menu link at the top right of every page on the mobile version of the site? Click that and you should go to the bottom of the page where the menu is. Then just scroll up a little to see the latest comments.
posted by pb (staff) at 8:50 PM on October 29, 2010


People experiencing glacial typing in MeFi comment boxes on any platform might find things improve if they turn off Live Preview using its handy (Hide) link. Don't do this half way through typing a comment though, or it will all go away.
posted by flabdablet at 9:46 PM on October 29, 2010


Huh? MonkeyFilter is still around? Wow, so it is.
posted by koeselitz at 9:48 PM on October 29, 2010


Have you seen the skip to menu link at the top right of every page on the mobile version of the site? Click that and you should go to the bottom of the page where the menu is. Then just scroll up a little to see the latest comments.

That works ok, unless there's been a whole lot of comments. Say, because it's been a couple hours since you loaded the thread. But if there have been a lot of comments, skipping to the top, refreshing, and skipping to the bottom leaves an awful lot of thread to swipe back up through. So, it's definitely useful, but not as convenient as the refresh-in-place behavior that I get by clicking on the refresh arrow on the computer.
posted by leahwrenn at 9:51 PM on October 29, 2010


Opera Mobile is perhaps the only redeeming thing about my WinMo phone. It has a refresh button for every site. =)

(And FWIW, the mobile mefi site runs beautifully on it.)
posted by carsonb at 10:30 PM on October 29, 2010


That works ok, unless there's been a whole lot of comments.

What I've done in those cases is tapped and held on the timestamp permalink at the current bottom of a thread and selected "open in new window" from the pop-up menu. Should chuck open a new window that reloads the thread and takes you to that comment where you left off.

It'd be great if mobile safari would just actually reload the goddam page when you click on an anchor link, though. I should probably give Opera a go.
posted by cortex (staff) at 6:59 AM on October 30, 2010 [1 favorite]


You guys want an experience, try accessing MeFi (or MoFi) on a simple non-smart phone.

th
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wha
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a b
lo
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qui
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loo
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lik
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Comments are indented, but they're not as bad ad the block quotes. Sometimes I get lucky and the style sheet doesn't load, and I can actually read the site.

Opera Mobile is fine, except with my plan accessing the web with Opera Mobile, as opposed to EZ-Web bumps my bill to a minimum of $140 (Thanks, au!). So yeah, I'd like a barebones site for mobile phones.

Of course, if I'm missing something, I'd love know what I can do to make the experience better.
posted by gc at 7:47 AM on October 30, 2010


gc, we might be able to do something. Try loading this page in your phone and send me everything after Browser:. There are hundreds of phone User-Agents and we're not detecting all of them, so it might just be a case of adding it to our list. In some cases that's not enough, though, and creating a custom design for each of the various old phone browsers isn't practical for us. But we'll see what we can do.
posted by pb (staff) at 9:05 AM on October 30, 2010


For scrolling, you can tap the top of the screen to scroll to the top in safari.

d'oh! that is better than nothing ...

What I've done in those cases is tapped and held on the timestamp permalink at the current bottom of a thread and selected "open in new window" from the pop-up menu. Should chuck open a new window that reloads the thread and takes you to that comment where you left off.

You know, the next time I'm suprised I have to show someone how to use tabbed browsing (third person in as many days) I'll have to remember that I didn't know this. Thank you. :)





... typing from a real computer and browser this time

posted by tilde at 11:26 AM on October 30, 2010


Metafilter: I had no idea about the monkeys.
posted by klausness at 2:52 PM on October 30, 2010


You guys want an experience, try accessing MeFi (or MoFi) on a simple non-smart phone.

My old Sony cameraphone coped fine with Mefi, although it's about all it could cope with. With all that my new iTouch can do it seems almost churlish to moan about the lack of Mefi Scroll Tag :)
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 3:32 PM on October 30, 2010


There's a tweak available on Cydia called Action Menu that adds a few options to the menu that appears when you select a word. I mostly got it for "select all," but there are options to jump to the bottom or to the top of the page. The basic version of the tweak is free. You need to be jailbroken, of course.
posted by Thoughtcrime at 11:08 PM on October 30, 2010


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