Teensy Text on iPad

August 18, 2012 4:46 PM

Is there a way to make MeFi more readable on my iPad?

Hey, I tried looking for previous questions about this, but had trouble not getting every MeFi result ever about the iPad, so apologies if this has been asked before. The text on the site is very small on Safari on my iPad. Is there a mobile site I don't know about?

posted by loveyhowell to MetaFilter-Related at 4:46 PM (35 comments total)

Click Preferences at the top of any page and try playing around with the font sizes until you get something that's readable for you. There's the body font size for post text and the smaller font size for things like bylines. You can set those to a larger number to get larger text. Click Save, and those settings will be set for your iPad.

They're cookie-based, so it won't affect any other browsers you use until it's time to save your preferences in that different browser.
posted by pb (staff) at 4:49 PM on August 18, 2012 [4 favorites]

Oh, my lord, that totally worked! Thanks a million!
posted by loveyhowell at 4:59 PM on August 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

3 minutes? Is there some sort of pb-signal that goes out when these sort of posts go up?
posted by MadamM at 6:37 PM on August 18, 2012 [4 favorites]

Is there some sort of pb-signal that goes out when these sort of posts go up?

It shines a monstrous "P" on the clouds over London. (PB, in turn, sees it on a webcam.)
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 6:54 PM on August 18, 2012 [6 favorites]

Everyone on team mod gets an email with every new MetaTalk thread. I just happened to be at my computer when this was posted. I wish lights projected on clouds were involved. That'd be more fun.
posted by pb (staff) at 7:08 PM on August 18, 2012 [2 favorites]

pb, qb of the db.
bd
pq
ft

Some of the bery vest English switchy-Flippy-Kissing letters!

If you enjoy these opposite letters, you may enjoy such words as, actually, wait, I realized today (possibly uninterestingly [if so sorry]) that the early Hebraic, pre-vowel movement, tri-root for King (or chief, I guess) is 'MLK', aka, מֶלֶךְ‏, 'melek' (also, the Arabic word being ملك Malik, which would have a Tri-part root of MLK, also Malik or a variation appears to have been in use in many other spaces across quite a wide region for Kingly folk, so it was a nice little suprise to notice it was like an "inside acronym[?]" for MLK, coincidentally, a popular modern nym of Martin Luther King.

Words canbesoweiredfun (if you noticed this long ago, sorry, it took me a while to see what was done there, and I got excited to notice).
posted by infinite intimation at 8:22 PM on August 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

ft is not opposite lett-- ooohhhh. OOOOHHHHHHH. coooool.
posted by twist my arm at 8:34 PM on August 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

So what was the fastest fulfilled pony request? From asking to a solution being posted back here?

It has to be something that required implementation, because this question could have been answered by lots of people, but few can make code changes.
posted by cjorgensen at 9:02 PM on August 18, 2012

So what was the fastest fulfilled pony request?

I have no idea. We don't track that sort of thing. Feature requests take time and involve lots of discussion both here in MetaTalk and behind the scenes. Sometimes site copy typo fixes can be quick. And sometimes bug fixes can be quick. But most of the time these things take time.
posted by pb (staff) at 9:56 PM on August 18, 2012

bdbd
pqpq
ft ft

By the way is international internet semaphore for a Spotted Owl Spotting, should that situation arise.
posted by infinite intimation at 10:22 PM on August 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

Double tapping so that the page zooms in a little is my default way of reading MeFi on an iPad.

However, pb, is there any way that the "Reader" function on iOS Safari could become more useful while reading Metafilter? Currently if I use Reader on Metafilter all it does is display the FPPs title, although I have seen it sometimes display the FPP and maybe the first comment. What's preventing the "Reader" function from displaying the whole thread?
posted by Effigy2000 at 3:13 AM on August 19, 2012

Any news on that possible iPhone/iPad app?
posted by PeterMcDermott at 5:14 AM on August 19, 2012

While we're talking about Mefi on mobile devices, is there anything that can be done about the size of the text input box? I wasn't sure if there was already some sort of arcane solution baked into the iphone or if it's dependent on the site's mobile layout, but I get annoyed that I can't scroll within the input box when I write a comment longer than 36 words.
posted by the latin mouse at 5:26 AM on August 19, 2012

For the text input box scrolling, use the relatively unknown two-finger scroll (place two fingers within the area and move them up or down). Don't pinch or zoom. Works on ios devices.
posted by jenkinsEar at 5:31 AM on August 19, 2012 [2 favorites]

What's preventing the "Reader" function from displaying the whole thread?

We don't know, and Apple doesn't share how the Reader function works. They don't want sites to game that system to show ads. My guess is that on most sites the comments section is noise so the Reader function identifies those and blocks them.

Your best bet is to get the site looking good through preferences and read it that way. We're not going to be able to change things specifically for the Reader function.

Any news on that possible iPhone/iPad app?

We're working on it!
posted by pb (staff) at 6:43 AM on August 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

Dear god if using the site from the iPad gets any easier my friends may never hear from me again.
posted by The Whelk at 7:07 AM on August 19, 2012 [3 favorites]

ft is not opposite lett-- ooohhhh. OOOOHHHHHHH. coooool.
I still don't get it.
posted by Night_owl at 7:16 AM on August 19, 2012

This opposite letters discussion reminds me of how satisfying I find the printrbot logo.
posted by Vectorcon Systems at 7:22 AM on August 19, 2012

I still don't get it.

Reflect a lower-case f in a horizontal axis (i.e., exchange top and bottom but not left and right) and you get something which looks like a lower-case t, if you write your lower-case t's with that little hook at the bottom and you're willing to overlook some differences in the relative proportions between different pieces of the letter.
posted by stebulus at 9:24 AM on August 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

But anyway, in a world that contains Scott Kim, all letters are opposite letters.
posted by stebulus at 9:26 AM on August 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

Feature requests take time and involve lots of discussion both here in MetaTalk and behind the scenes.

Yeah, I get that. I was just curious. Wasn't looking for hard data, I was just trying to think of times when someone came in as said, "I'd like this to happen," and people thought it was a cool idea, the behind the scenes folk got chuffed, people threatened to lock you away until you made it happen, and you were all, "Reload and unto you I grant this pony. 33.6 seconds!"
posted by cjorgensen at 10:32 AM on August 19, 2012

I've been finding the whole making-things-better-for-mobile-devices trend interesting. Since I rejiggered MefightClub to be all responsive and easier to use on various small screens, I've noticed (no real data to back it up, just an observation) that although page views have continued to go up, there are slightly fewer comments and often shorter (and an increase in hitting the 'thanks' button, the equivalent of favorites at MeFi), mostly because it's kind of a pain in the butt typing long comments on iDevices and so on.

Not a big change or anything, but it seems true (and I notice it myself in my own habits) that tablets and phones do kind of reinforce consumption-of-media (even when the media in question is just text conversation) over participation, I think.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:25 PM on August 19, 2012

Thanks, stebulus. I had actually gotten that, but for some reason my brain wanted that letter pair to relate to qp and db as well.
posted by Night_owl at 7:34 PM on August 19, 2012

If I find an especially long and/or juicy thread I will add it to Instapaper using a browser bookmarklet and read it later using the iPad app, which was worth every penny.
posted by mecran01 at 9:36 PM on August 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

Ohhh. My hack was always to read in landscape mode. Now my youthful eyes will be preserved, so better to read Mefi for another fifty years! Or something else more, uh, productive, y'know.

(Thanks pb!)
posted by undue influence at 12:29 AM on August 20, 2012

I wish lights projected on clouds were involved. That'd be more fun.

Make it so.
posted by flabdablet at 2:28 AM on August 20, 2012

I had actually gotten that, but for some reason my brain wanted that letter pair to relate to qp and db as well.

My mistake. What kind of relation to qp/db did you have in mind? (Now I am the one not getting it.)
posted by stebulus at 7:14 AM on August 20, 2012

I wish lights projected on clouds were involved.

The pbeacon.
posted by Devils Rancher at 7:59 AM on August 20, 2012 [1 favorite]

That's urine on snow.
posted by cjorgensen at 9:05 AM on August 20, 2012

What kind of relation to qp/db did you have in mind?

I thought it was implied that there was one, which is why I was confused. Turns out I was overthinking it.

Overthinking things? On MY Metatalk? Well I never!
posted by Night_owl at 12:27 PM on August 20, 2012

Actually, my gripe with the iPhone comment box is that it's about 40% the width of the screen, and when you tap into it to comment, the screen zooms so that the comment box itself is the only thing taking up the screen. This isn't a big deal, except that now all the comments above the comment box are way too big, and I have to scroll sideways if I'm trying to quote or refer to something.

Which is to say, is there any chance of making the comment box in the mobile view wider and have the input text be the same size as the body font? If that's not possible or desirable for whatever reason I totally understand, and I'd probably benefit from commenting less on my phone anyway.
posted by Phire at 9:11 AM on August 21, 2012

Sorry, that isn't possible without turning off the ability to zoom the page. On a page that's zoomable, mobile safari zooms into the textarea when you click it to make a comment. So we could turn off zooming to do it, but I think that'd be pretty hostile.
posted by pb (staff) at 9:44 AM on August 21, 2012

And the textarea is that size so that you can see the whole thing when it's zoomed in. If we made it wider, you'd need to scroll left and right as you write a comment. That'd be a bigger hassle than scrolling around to read comments as you write.

What you can do is click "Done" if you need to read something on the page. Then pinch to go out to the zoomed-out view. Read or quote, then click back into the textarea.
posted by pb (staff) at 9:46 AM on August 21, 2012

That makes sense. Thanks for the quick and detailed reply, pb.
posted by Phire at 10:10 AM on August 21, 2012

Please never disable zooming. (not that i'm too worried, but...) There's nothing on the iPhone more frustrating that trying to perform a pinch-to-zoom on it site that disables it. I just close the window when i encounter that.
posted by Devils Rancher at 10:23 AM on August 21, 2012