Please display tags in the mobile style sheet

April 11, 2011 6:57 AM

Pony: could we display tags in the mobile view?

I just noticed that the mobile view of AskMe doesn't display the tags for the question. This came up because I had a question on my iPhone and wanted to quickly find it on my laptop to reply. I figured the tags would be the easiest way to do that, but alas no tags were shown.

There are any number of places they could be shown. It would even be okay if I had to tap something to show them. But it does seem like they should be shown. We want to encourage tagging, and part of that is treating tags as a first-class component of a post.

posted by alms to Feature Requests at 6:57 AM (13 comments total)

Guess which answer it will be!

a) Mobile is what it is, use the full site if you want tags. -whatever mod sees this first
b) This is done, good idea. -pb
posted by smackfu at 7:10 AM on April 11, 2011

I think there's more of a metafilter push to make the site better for mobile-users.

More bells and whistles and stuff.

Interesting.
posted by hal_c_on at 7:14 AM on April 11, 2011

I don't know. I kind of like the sparseness of the mobile site and think that tags might be more clutter on a small display. It's pretty easy to just switch to the regular site on your device (assuming it has enough memory to do so, and most smartphones made in the past 3-4 years probably do) and get more info.
posted by Burhanistan at 7:25 AM on April 11, 2011

I think we're going with a) on this. We really want the mobile site to be as easy to use as possible, which means that it does a few fewer things. The regular site works completely fine on mobile devices.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 8:00 AM on April 11, 2011

If you mobile users don't knock this off, your tiny screen is gonna be full of ponies.

On second thought, that sounds awesome!
posted by chillmost at 8:08 AM on April 11, 2011

Maybe I'm stupid, but I switched on the standard site because I was curious to see how it looked and now I can't figure out how to get back the mobile one. Help, I want my nice mobile site back!
posted by aspo at 8:11 AM on April 11, 2011

aspo: look at the bottom of the page under the Links heading for a "Mobile" link.
posted by Burhanistan at 8:19 AM on April 11, 2011

Sweet, thanks.
posted by aspo at 9:24 AM on April 11, 2011

chillmost: If you mobile users don't knock this off, your tiny screen is gonna be full of ponies.

On second thought, that sounds awesome!

Be careful what you wish for.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:02 AM on April 11, 2011

*shudder*
posted by chillmost at 1:43 PM on April 11, 2011

If you mobile users don't knock this off, your tiny screen is gonna be full of ponies.

On second thought, that sounds awesome!
posted by furiousxgeorge at 2:02 PM on April 11, 2011

It seems to me that the mobile site is supposed to be less functional - more on the side of less data to be downloaded and minimal clutter on a tiny screen than providing a full-function site - if you want all the bells and whistles, use the full site and let those of us who use mobile devices on crappy connections keep a reasonable level of functionality. If you're on a fast connection, it's trivial to switch between the mobile and full site if you want the extra functions.
posted by dg at 4:00 PM on April 11, 2011

I have wished for this before. At this point, one can do almost everything via the mobile site. I can easily get to a screen to edit my profile. It is really ingenious, the way it nests things (e.g., recent favorites*) inside other things (recent activity).
* Not that I would ever check

Tags would be quite useful. "Here, let me pull up a few past questions about books as we stand here in the bookstore." It adds to the comprehension of a question and is a way to quickly find past questions when answering the current question.
posted by salvia at 11:41 PM on April 11, 2011