long way to the top

May 27, 2012 3:13 AM

It's a long way to the TOP if ya gotta scroll 'n' scroll.

On mobile: it's easy to jump from the top of a long thread to the bottom of that thread. The workaround is to hit the [skip to menu] link, then scroll a short distance back up through the menu area.

To skip from the bottom of a long thread back to the top of that thread is a different story. I've not discovered a workaround; and it really is a long way to the top if you have to scroll and scroll.

Is a "return to top" link -- positoned down with the switch and contact links (say) -- something you'd consider implementing? Please.

posted by de to Feature Requests at 3:13 AM (39 comments total)

This is a question for pb, but in the meantime I'll just mention for anyone who may be interested who hasn't already tried it, the Dolphin browser allows gestures (video). Some are already programmed, and you can also make up your own. A "V" gesture takes you to the bottom of the page, and a caret shape (ʌ) takes you to the top. Very, very handy.
posted by taz (staff) at 3:27 AM on May 27, 2012 [4 favorites]

I don't know what sort of mobile you're using, but on an iPhone you can tap the status bar between the time and battery and it will shoot you back to the top of the page.
posted by TallulahBankhead at 3:33 AM on May 27, 2012 [6 favorites]

No, HTC. Looks like I need an iPhone. I'm thinking gestures could be an Apple thing, too.
posted by de at 3:44 AM on May 27, 2012

Dolphin Browser is available for HTC Android phones. Gestures suddenly stopped working on my ancient HTC after the last update, but there IS a little button that appears at the bottom when you start scrolling to the top that will take you immediately to the top.
posted by K.P. at 4:02 AM on May 27, 2012 [3 favorites]

On the Opera Mobile browser, a long/quick flick to scroll shows a button that will take you immediately to the top or bottom of the page depending on which way you flicked.
posted by Petrot at 4:19 AM on May 27, 2012

if you think it's easy doing one-click stands
try scrolling with dinosaur hands
posted by pyramid termite at 5:12 AM on May 27, 2012 [7 favorites]

I hope this thread has lots and lots of comments.
posted by iamkimiam at 6:07 AM on May 27, 2012 [5 favorites]

if you're stuck in a long ass page and the tap-to-top doesn't work (in things like Twitter's safari viewer) you take your two index fingers and alternate scrolling them, like two little walking legs. You'd be amazed how quickly you can scroll dozens of screens in a second or two.

previously
posted by carsonb at 6:10 AM on May 27, 2012

On my BlackBerry I just hit "t" - double check your phone's user manual and make sure your native browser doesn't have a pre-set shortcut for this (it'll solve problems on more than just MetaFilter.)
posted by SMPA at 6:25 AM on May 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

Yeah there is a really good chance that there is some way to do this within your phone's UI somehow. Props for the ACϞDC reference.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 6:50 AM on May 27, 2012 [4 favorites]

Here's what drives me insane with rage about Dolphin Browser. In the same recent update where they added that little button to go back to the top when you start scrolling that way, they also added the "feature" that when you start scrolling up, the URL bar also appears,making up precious screen real estate and covering up what I'm trying to read (FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU). It is the most infuriating thing, and I can't even imagine what they were thinking with it.
posted by adamdschneider at 6:57 AM on May 27, 2012

Yeah, I'm looking around now. There have been plenty of hints here.
Thank you.

I rather fancy trying gestures ... especially if I'm to ward off the dinosaur tag.
posted by de at 7:04 AM on May 27, 2012

ACϞDC

For future ACDCing purposes, there's actually a "High Voltage Sign" unicode glyph: ⚡. Looks like there's more than one zig-zag in some fonts but on my system "AC⚡DC" looks exactly like the band logo.
posted by XMLicious at 7:11 AM on May 27, 2012 [11 favorites]

"AC⚡DC" looks like "AC[box]DC" to me, while jessamyn's ACϞDC doesn't exactly look like the band's logo it looks good enough and works in my browser, Chrome in Win7, haven't checked it with linux or any other browsers. Clearly, we will need to do extensive testing to make sure we have the best and most compatible way to represent AC[lightning bolt symbol]DC.
posted by fuq at 7:51 AM on May 27, 2012 [2 favorites]

Depending on the temporal anchor of your comment you may also want to swap out the C_{Bon Scott} glyph for C_{Brian Johnson}, though not all chronomusitypographers will agree that the substitution is appropriate.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:00 AM on May 27, 2012 [8 favorites]

SMPA, thanks, that's saved me some annoyance.
posted by arcticseal at 8:23 AM on May 27, 2012

Cripes, even in Windows 7 they don't include fonts with as much coverage as the free ones? Anyone who can't see that may want to install the DejaVu fonts.
posted by XMLicious at 8:29 AM on May 27, 2012

not all chronomusitypographers will agree that the substitution is appropriate

I understand that it's natural to imprint on the first AC/DC singer one is exposed to, but if the Scott-era band ever performed "Sin City" as well as did the February 5, 1981 band in Tokyo, I will welcome video evidence in support of the claim.
posted by Trurl at 8:38 AM on May 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

If we're derailing into awesome symbols, I've always wondered if there is a webpage with all/most of them available to be cut and pasted. Lightning bolts, musical notes, hearts...I've seen lots, but I don't know where they come from. Anybody?
posted by cribcage at 8:44 AM on May 27, 2012

I came in to mention how the Dolphin mobile browser makes the mobile browsing experience all too pleasant, but it seems taz sort of beat me to it, so I'll just stick around to back up whatever she says (and I do mean whatever).

Seriously though, Dolphin is one fine piece of 0's and 1's. I'd be interested in seeing a desktop version, which as far as I know there isn't. Right? Maybe someone could tell me I'm wrong, as come to think of it I've never bothered looking.
posted by item at 8:47 AM on May 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

Here's some.
posted by heyho at 8:47 AM on May 27, 2012

acrticseal: SMPA, thanks, that's saved me some annoyance.

No problem. Hit "b" to go to the bottom (they were extremely creative with their choice of shortcut keys, it's like the folks at RIM are really artistic types or something.)
posted by SMPA at 9:02 AM on May 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

After listening to AC/DC for many years, I finally realized the main difference is that Bon was being funny on purpose.
posted by drjimmy11 at 9:17 AM on May 27, 2012 [2 favorites]

cribcage: something like this? (That's where they all come from, at any rate.)

Anyway, Ϟ is actually a Greek koppa, which seems less appropriate than ⚡.
posted by hattifattener at 10:33 AM on May 27, 2012 [3 favorites]

(Or maybe you'd prefer this version)
posted by hattifattener at 10:38 AM on May 27, 2012

I use Atomic Web on my iPhone and it's super easy to define gestures. I've set up the same ones from my Mac. 3 finger swipe up or down to get to the top or bottom. Two finger swipe left or right to switch tabs. I never leave full screen.
posted by special-k at 10:40 AM on May 27, 2012

If you have a Samsung Galaxy S phone and are planning on installing the Dolphin browser, uncheck the option to put a shortcut on your home screen. It can crash your phone if your home screen doesn't have room for a new icon. Specifically, it can crash TWLauncher, preventing your phone from booting completely and rendering it unusable.

Had this happen a couple of months ago and was forced to log in to my google account on a desktop computer to install the GoEx launcher through the Play Store, and have it automatically download to my phone -- so the phone would present me with an option of Launchers to run on startup.

The browser is nice and works well. But that was a hell of a bug to have to fix.
posted by zarq at 2:02 PM on May 27, 2012

Just wanted to chime in on the Linux / Win7 regressions for the lightning bolt symbol; Ubuntu precise pangolin (12.04) is currently displaying the lightning bolt glyph correctly for Chrome (Version 19.0.1084.52), Firefox 12 (Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:12.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/12.0), and Opera 11.64 (Opera/9.80 (X11; Linux x86_64; U; en) Presto/2.10.229 Version/11.64).

Have we isolated the issue to win7 / IE8+, or are we unable to display the AC DC glyph correctly on a larger target? I've filed a new CR to cover this use case, and am submitting a second RFC to the unicode support team asking for a "Steal Your Face" for grateful dead insignia purposes. Should we amend the previous change request and also add in a "fat man in a bathtub" glyph?
posted by jenkinsEar at 2:41 PM on May 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

I'm just waiting for the entirety of icanhazcheezburger image database to become individual unicode characters. It'll be like a backdoor to the img tag!
posted by kaibutsu at 3:25 PM on May 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

There is a Greasemonkey script called scroll to top which adds a pointing arrow on the bottom right of the screen. I love it.
posted by marienbad at 3:43 PM on May 27, 2012

The issue is Chrome, not Win7. Fx on Win7 displays everything fine. Chrome -- at least on Windows -- is absolutely brain dead about font subsitution, and so it's missing character boxes all over the place, even if a system font exists that has the characters.
posted by Rhomboid at 4:29 PM on May 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

Huh. I'm actually on Windows XP and it works fine in Chrome, although it selects a different font than Firefox does. Google and/or Microsoft need to get their stuff together, this is srs bsns.
posted by XMLicious at 4:44 PM on May 27, 2012

You need to be using Dolphin on your HTC like I do because it does these things and I use it on my HTC, so I can honestly tell you for sure that it will solve the problem you are writing about here--unless for some reason I'm misunderstanding you and you are really asking about something else that can't be solved by switching your mobile phone browser to Dolphin and using either mouse gestures or the little u-turn-arrow signal at the bottom right that pops up when you start madly scrolling to get to the top in a hurry and it notices you're doing that and gives you that little icon that jumps right to the top, in which case, I'm sorry for wasting your time with this originally quite normal comment that somehow turned out to be a pretty long and involved sentence, but, I hope, not an actual run-on.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 8:10 PM on May 27, 2012

I was going to just mention that I use Firefox and figured out at some point that a two finger swipe up or down would take me to the top or bottom of the page respectively. But holy badass water mammal browser batman! Dolphin Browser is pretty sweet and I didn't know about it until reading this thread.
posted by aydeejones at 12:06 PM on May 28, 2012

I think I got my "respectively" backwards wrt to Firefox but I'm too lazy to double check. Dolphins eat Firefoxes for breakfast.
posted by aydeejones at 12:09 PM on May 28, 2012

OK, the lightning bolt works in Chromium in Ubuntu 11.whateverI'mrunning. So, anecdote?
posted by fuq at 7:30 PM on May 28, 2012

Wow. Riveting discussion.
posted by slogger at 8:13 PM on May 28, 2012 [1 favorite]

We've got bullets: ⁍ but not rivets. Sorry if the derails here aren't as entertaining as the ones in other discussions of scrolling functionality you've been involved in.
posted by XMLicious at 9:08 PM on May 28, 2012 [1 favorite]

• &rivet; ++

cribcage: here's another ready reckoner with miscellaneous symbols.
posted by de at 9:27 AM on May 30, 2012