Easier favoriting on the mobile version? December 17, 2010 3:03 PM   Subscribe

Pony request: can we make flagging and favoriting easier on the mobile site?

Not sure of the best way to do it, I dont think bigger +'s are the answer. I notice that I mainly have a problem when someone else has already favorited a comment, which makes it really hard to target the + properly. Maybe just some more separation between the +, ! and 'favorited by' links?
posted by empath to Feature Requests at 3:03 PM (31 comments total) 2 users marked this as a favorite

Not sure how hard it is to favorite a comment on the mobile site yourself? Try it here! ↓
posted by carsonb at 3:14 PM on December 17, 2010 [3 favorites]


Yeah, those little pluses are pretty darn hard to hit. Maybe there should be a popup menu for this sort of thing.
posted by grouse at 3:20 PM on December 17, 2010


Would it be any easier if, when there are already favorites, the plus stayed in its own little bracket?
[1 favorite] [+] [!]
Like that?
posted by carsonb at 3:22 PM on December 17, 2010


We talked about this in August. My suggestion at the time was to put the + in front of the X Favorites, with the idea that it gives you more room to miss on the left without being shunted off to a new tab.
posted by Rock Steady at 3:43 PM on December 17, 2010


When we talk about the mobile site are we just talking about iPhones? Because God this place is hell on a Blackberry.

Pretty much anything other than reading email is hell on a Blackberry though.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 3:44 PM on December 17, 2010


The Palm Pre also uses the mobile site, because it also uses WebKit.
posted by grouse at 3:46 PM on December 17, 2010 [1 favorite]


And you'll note that it actually behaves differently on MeTa than on AskMe and the front page. In MeTa, the favorite/flag interface is in line with the "posted by" stuff, while on the Green and the Blue they get their own newline. Still makes +ing hard when it is hemmed in by "X Favorites" on one side and "[!]" on t'other.
posted by Rock Steady at 3:46 PM on December 17, 2010


i get the mobile site on iphone and berry. how does your berry browser identify itself, Llama?
posted by By The Grace of God at 3:50 PM on December 17, 2010


Because God this place is hell on a Blackberry.

? I use my BB to read and comment here all the time. Haven't had a problem. Which BB are you using? And are you using the main site or the mobile version?
posted by zarq at 3:50 PM on December 17, 2010 [1 favorite]


When we talk about the mobile site are we just talking about iPhones? Because God this place is hell on a Blackberry.

Really? I much prefer surfing MeFi on my Blackberry to doing it on my iPod Touch. Then again, I prefer doing most anything internet-related on BB than my Touch. Go figure.
posted by Ufez Jones at 3:50 PM on December 17, 2010


The Palm Pre also uses the mobile site, because it also uses WebKit.

Presumably you can navigate via the Pre's keyboard and totally avoid this problem?
posted by kmz at 3:57 PM on December 17, 2010


Not sure how hard it is to favorite a comment on the mobile site yourself? Try it here!

Flagged!
posted by milarepa at 4:00 PM on December 17, 2010 [8 favorites]


Speaking of the Palm Pre, the "skip to menu" stopped working on mine. Thoughts/concerns?
posted by unknowncommand at 4:59 PM on December 17, 2010 [1 favorite]


I've managed to accidentally flag instead of favorite several times on my Droid....
posted by wildcrdj at 5:26 PM on December 17, 2010


Why not remove the "favorited by" link on the mobile site, and just make the whole [# favorites +] a link to make a favorite yourself? I don't think it would be that much of a sacrifice.
posted by auto-correct at 6:05 PM on December 17, 2010


It's tough on my Evo - I end up hitting the [!] half the time.
posted by matildaben at 8:07 PM on December 17, 2010 [1 favorite]


unknowncommand, are you using Opera on the Palm Pre?
posted by pb (staff) at 8:55 PM on December 17, 2010


Never had a problem with it.
posted by Artw at 9:59 PM on December 17, 2010


unknowncommand, mine stopped working a few months ago too. Even after a few hatd resets...
posted by k8t at 10:05 PM on December 17, 2010


? I use my BB to read and comment here all the time. Haven't had a problem. Which BB are you using? And are you using the main site or the mobile version?

It's a Curve, I think. I think it auto-routes to the mobile site--the menu options display vertically. It's been a while since I tried to do anything on it but read the site but I'll try again. I got errors trying to comment or favorite, from what I remember.

Also I just really hate my Blackberry. Maybe I gave up too easily. Whenever I do anything on the web with it I feel like it's 1995 and I'm using a modem to dial into my AOL account.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 4:07 AM on December 18, 2010


My BB Curve 8530 is great on this site, except sometimes I get goofy JavaScript Required errors. This is actually one of my favorite mobile sites.
posted by SMPA at 4:53 AM on December 18, 2010


I can't speak for Blackberries, but it is indeed hard to favorite things on an iPhone on the mobile site. I remember the last time this came up there were various suggestions about putting the plus sign on a separate line break, or making it bigger.

On the other hand, though, I've noticed that it makes a huge difference on an iPhone simply to increase the x-axis of a link. What if we changed it, on the mobile site only, to the following:

If there are no favorites yet:

Posted by blahblah at 12:00 [add to favorites][!]

Or if there are favorites:

Posted by blah blah [5 favorites (add to favorites)][!]

I think that'd solve the problem for mobile users.
posted by malapropist at 7:05 AM on December 18, 2010


Yeah, I think that might work malapropist. Increasing the size puts too much emphasis on flagging/favorites, and moving the [+] around slightly doesn't quite solve the problem.

Another option is to remove flagging from the mobile site since that seems to be where most folks are mis-clicking. But I think I prefer making it "add to favorites" because it would help separate that action from the list of favorites which people might want to see.
posted by pb (staff) at 7:12 AM on December 18, 2010


Please do not remove mobile flagging! As I am sure the mods are aware, I love me some flagging, and I do lots of my Metafiltering from my phone.

Speaking of which, I have tiny little hands, and a ginormous Droid X "phone," and I still miss every third or fourth time.
posted by jtron at 5:51 PM on December 18, 2010 [1 favorite]


Is Opera the default browser? I just use whatever is there. It worked for a while and then stopped.
posted by unknowncommand at 8:58 PM on December 18, 2010


k8t, I've also done a few hard resets for other reasons, and it has never returned.
posted by unknowncommand at 9:00 PM on December 18, 2010


unknowncommand or k8t, would you mind visiting this page on your Palm and sending me the line that starts with Browser:?
posted by pb (staff) at 9:08 PM on December 18, 2010


A Terrible Llama: " It's a Curve, I think. I think it auto-routes to the mobile site--the menu options display vertically. It's been a while since I tried to do anything on it but read the site but I'll try again. I got errors trying to comment or favorite, from what I remember.

Also I just really hate my Blackberry. Maybe I gave up too easily. Whenever I do anything on the web with it I feel like it's 1995 and I'm using a modem to dial into my AOL account.
"

I'm also using a Curve. I don't use the mobile site. I just stick to http://www.metafilter.com. I've bookmarked the front page and my recent activity, and use the "professional" white background. Metafilter displays very quickly, and only ever gives me errors when I try to do anything that requires javascript, which I have turned off. Menu items will display vertically on a Curve using the main site.

Commenting and posting shouldn't be giving you errors. I suggest making sure javascript is turned off, then going to options in the browser menu and clearing your cache.

Problems:
The only major problem I've had over the years is that very, very large threads (800 - 1000+ comments) have a tendency to overwhelm the browser and it crashes. But we don't have those all that often, so it's not that big a deal to me.

And preview doesn't work well -- I always need to hit refresh.
posted by zarq at 9:12 PM on December 18, 2010


Thanks Zarq. I'll give those a try.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 3:21 AM on December 19, 2010


@pb it says Mozilla/5.0 (web)S/1.4.5; U; en-US) AppleWebKit/532.2 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/1.0 Safari/532.2 Pre/1.0
posted by k8t at 4:32 PM on December 22, 2010


Thanks k8t, made the change a couple days ago and heard from unknowncommand that skip was working for them now. Hopefully it's working for you too.
posted by pb (staff) at 9:56 AM on December 23, 2010


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