Mobile access

I don’t have useful suggestions on this. However as a user who primarily interacts with FUD through her iPhone, and finds Discus helpful but not amazing, I find it a little bit difficult to determine where the wiki articles are located once I read them – did you disappear. Just thought I would give you a little feedback on what it’s like as a general either. :slight_smile:

This is not a complaint – this website is amazing – and I don’t know how you guys keep it going. But it’s pretty awesome.

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This is worthy of a thread all of its own. I also primarily, almost exclusively, use an iPhone. iPhone 99% of time iPad 1%. Don’t own a computer— I think we could and should take steps to make the forum more mobile friendly. Can we split into a new topic ?

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Done.

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Thanks. Accessing through an iPhone will always pose some limitations but I think there are some steps we can take and discuss to improve the mobile access. For example I can tel you it’s rather annoying with a small phone screen to scroll through the many categories to create a post and it’s somewhat glitchy in that regard as well

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I am fully impressed. And somehow envious, even though I secretly love computers, and I teach computers for a living.

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My wife has one she uses for grad school… I don’t touch it. I’ve had many in the past… the last one my daughter closed something inside the laptop screen and broke it and I decided I felt no need to replace it

Same - after my laptop kicked the bucket, I’ve stuck to iPhone/iPad, though hubby has a laptop and built a computer. I find scrolling through the categories to post difficult/glitchy as well, but I just use the menu at the top to go directly to the category I want to post in and then post. An extra step, but it makes me less frustrated with it. :wink:

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I often do the same when using my phone.

First, are you all using the Discourse app rather than a mobile browser? It’s totally the way to go. I find the Discourse app much more comfortable to use, and the automated login is much more comfortable too.

I find reading on mobile easy, since Discourse shows you all new threads regardless of category.

It is starting a new thread on mobile which is more of a pain. On my updated Android phone, in general, I have little trouble scrolling down on the dropdown to select a category, but I find it much easier, with my fat fingers, to do the same thing as @Pianoplayer7008: I tap on the menu icon on the upper right hand and select categories. I click on the right category (and if need be subcategory), then select “New Topic.”

In general, I find it somewhat painful to be on mobile when I need to edit a long post, or to reply when I want to quote somebody (particularly multiple times). I tend to post much more on a computer with a keyboard and a mouse, and read much more on my phone.

This isn’t why I haven’t had the time to reply to the thread I started yet. :blush: Finally got the kids in bed, though…

ETA: I use Discourse now. At first I just had it open in my browser all the time.

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I’ve historically been using chrome— because safari and discourse app are incapable of keeping me logged in. I believe this is something wrong with my personal settings because my iPad and my wife’s iPhone stay logged in just fine but I’ve literally spent hours trying to find the setting and researching it online and drawn only blanks. Bottle of nice liquor of wine in store for first FUD member who solves this for me. That said I really see no difference on iPhone between the discourse app and chrome-- except discourse makes me sign in way way too often and chrome doesn’t

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Hmmm. Interesting. I think I have to sign up once a month or so on the Discourse app. But a couple of times it asked me to sign up again twice in the same day – very rarely though.

I wind up only reading the NEW stuff. Which is kinda annoying because I’m sure there are old threads which are relevant.

The most frustrating thing for me in Discus is not being able to post multiple quotes in my reply, because then I’m writing more replies.

Also, I think it is a glitch with my own phone – I tend to read these replies by using the microphone icon on my iPhone’s digital keyboard – whenever I tap on that, and start talking, it adds an extra space before and after whatever I just talk/typed. Which, as a visually oriented person, drives me nuts. I have to go in and manually remove the spaces.

And any changes in case (let’s say I want to capitalize a word) if I try to do that through the keyboard (by double tapping the word in question, then selecting the Shift arrow) my phone won’t allow it if I’m in the Discus app. Also, using the predictive replacer option above the keyboard doesn’t work if I’ve typed the offending work and then clicked anywhere else - I can’t just go back and change it.

Both of these sound like really minor things, but there are enough that it’s kept me from replying some lately.

I should just quit being lazy and start using my computer that I own that is not broken!

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You actually can, it’s just a PITA on mobile.

Are you on iOS? It works for me on Android.

Very weird. This also works for me on Android. Must be iOS vs Android issues.

It’s good to hear that somebody else is having success using it – I really think it is probably just from my phone. Not even the iPhone, just my personal phone. If I manage to resolve the issue, I will post here how I went about that.

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To be fair, I still think it is a PITA to insert quotes. But that’s inherent to mobile tech/ touchscreens. And I have really fat fingers.

I don’t have particularly fat fingers, but I have a really hard time quoting multiple people. And I will say the screen is really small – the older I get, the smaller it seems.

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My experience is that I do not read old threads either when using the “latest” view.

However, I frequently read old threads when I go in the category view, which you can access by hitting the menu button on the top right (three horizontal lines) then selecting categories, then scrolling to the cat/subcat you are interested in.

Kermit is me! Except I make lots of typos as I go…

We probably should separate the mobile part of this thread from the wiki part.

Hummmm. You’re probably right. Maybe it needs to be two threads, one about how to access the wiki, and one about how to access the entire site from a mobile phone.

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