Modern/Redesign Bugs April 19, 2015 10:31 PM   Subscribe

o Pagination is funny, I need and expect the last line of the previous page to be the first line of my next page.
o View magnification acts oddly/inconsistently. For a while, I thought I was hitting the touchpad on my laptop, but it's not me.

So, it's back to Classic for me.
Anyone else seen these problems?
posted by pjmoy to Bugs at 10:31 PM (24 comments total)

Sorry you're having trouble with the site. It sounds like you're having trouble with the Page Down button as you browse the site with your keyboard. You might try removing the static menu at the top of the page by clicking the x on the far right and see if it works better for you.

I'm not sure what you mean by view magnification acting oddly. If you could describe what action you're taking, what you expect to happen, and then what happens instead that might help me understand what you're seeing.
posted by pb (staff) at 10:34 PM on April 19, 2015


It sounds like you're having trouble with the

pb, you are the best version of Clippy!
posted by phunniemee at 6:55 AM on April 20, 2015 [19 favorites]


Since we're all here... out of curiosity, is there any possibility that the new theme will eventually incorporate the "X comments have been added since you last refreshed this page" feature?
posted by zarq at 7:44 AM on April 20, 2015


Removing the static menu works fine, thanks for that.


View magnification/zoom level appeared to change appeared to change as I went off to read an article or go to the comments for a particular post, and then went back by backspacing. For instance, I had the zoom set to 133% at metafilter.com, went off to do my thing, came back to metafilter.com, and now the zoom was set at 110%(!). But now I cannot reproduce the problem, and I feel like an idiot.

Off the top of my head, the problem looked like an odd interaction between whatever Firefox does to maintain the current zoom level and whatever the Modern look does to display a page. But, idk, I will keep looking to repro' what I was talking about. (I certainly spend enough time reading metafilter.)
posted by pjmoy at 7:50 AM on April 20, 2015


...is there any possibility that the new theme will eventually incorporate the "X comments have been added since you last refreshed this page" feature?

We don't have any plans to, no. That was one of the trade-offs we had to make in the design process. We knew there would be some decisions like those that were a dealbreaker for some folks so that's why we also worked to keep the Classic and Plain themes from changing.

Thanks for the extra info pjmoy. I can't think of anything offhand that would be causing zoom-level changes like that. We don't have the ability to set zoom-levels on this end—that's handled entirely by the browser.
posted by pb (staff) at 8:00 AM on April 20, 2015


We don't have any plans to, no. That was one of the trade-offs we had to make in the design process. We knew there would be some decisions like those that were a dealbreaker for some folks so that's why we also worked to keep the Classic and Plain themes from changing.

OK. Thanks. And I appreciate your keeping the plain classic theme running, so thanks for that, too.
posted by zarq at 8:03 AM on April 20, 2015 [3 favorites]


Regarding the zoom level, I have occasionally experienced a phenomenon where I visit the site on my MacBookAir and it has apparently come to be set on the mobile view rather than the normal view. This, needless to say, makes everything look gigantic on my laptop screen. Not sure why this is happening, and it could of course be some kind of settings-transfer between my iDevices. I haven't done any testing to see if this is the case or not. I can say, however, that it has happened around a half-dozen times and only with Metafilter. Usually takes me quite some time to figure out how to reset the view. Anyway, I wonder if something like that might be part of pjmoy's problem.
posted by slkinsey at 8:21 AM on April 20, 2015


slkinsey, how do you reset the view when this happens? And are you using the Modern theme?
posted by pb (staff) at 8:23 AM on April 20, 2015


One thing that's different about the modern theme is that things adjust as the browser window resizes. You can try it right now by making your browser window narrow, taking a look at how things change, and then making it wide again. That's my first guess at what's happening on your MacBook. Maybe you resized your browser window for some reason and then you went to a MetaFilter tab and things had changed a bit.
posted by pb (staff) at 8:31 AM on April 20, 2015


Generally speaking I reset the view by logging out, restarting my browser and logging back in. Not sure if this is actually required, but after poking around for a while trying to figure out a different way that's what I usually end up doing.
posted by slkinsey at 8:36 AM on April 20, 2015


Are you using the Modern theme? It's possible to set a cookie to identify your browser as being mobile in the Classic and Plain themes. Logging out and back in would fix that.

In the Modern theme it's not possible. The new theme is reponsive—it changes based on the size of the browser window rather than trying to identify mobile clients vs. desktop clients via their identifying information. So logging out and back in shouldn't change what you're seeing the modern theme.
posted by pb (staff) at 8:39 AM on April 20, 2015


I am using the Modern theme. I should probably have added that I delete all Metafilter cookies as part of trying to get the site to stop showing me the mobile version on my laptop.
posted by slkinsey at 8:59 AM on April 20, 2015


Maybe it has something to do with Apple's Handoff system?
posted by slkinsey at 9:00 AM on April 20, 2015


When you see the mobile version on your laptop, what are you seeing exactly? Can you grab a screenshot of your entire browser window next time you run into it?

A couple other things to try when it happens: first, see what your zoom level is in your browser. Most browsers have a feature that lets you increase the size of the text. Zooming in is like telling the site that you're using a smaller browser window. Try resetting your zoom level to see if that's changing things. Next, try making your browser window wider if you can. Like I mentioned, the size of the window can trigger the mobile features.
posted by pb (staff) at 9:20 AM on April 20, 2015


Sorry, I don't know anything about Apple's Handoff system so I don't know if that's coming into play here.
posted by pb (staff) at 9:21 AM on April 20, 2015


I haven't looked into it, but I think sometimes my browser remembers zoom by site, and sometimes by certain pages. It's weird. Also I'd sometimes get weird zooms from not being careful with my trackpad. Try ctrl-0 or command-0 - both are zero, not o - to reset the zoom.
posted by Pronoiac at 3:21 PM on April 20, 2015


The problem with "page down" with the Modern header enabled is this Firefox bug, for what it's worth.
posted by mbrubeck at 4:12 PM on April 20, 2015


It sounds like you're having trouble with the...
pb, you are the best version of Clippy!


Great, now I'll forever think of him as Clipby (as will too many of the people who read this)

But my heart still belongs to Coppy.
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:30 PM on April 20, 2015


pb deserves better than being compared to fucking clippy.
posted by double block and bleed at 6:05 PM on April 20, 2015 [2 favorites]


pb deserves better than being compared to fucking clippy.

To be fair, that was one of the most popular versions of clippy.
posted by Celsius1414 at 8:50 AM on April 21, 2015


I read the first line as "Oh, Pagination is funny," and thought it was the start of a folk song bug-fix chorus.

Which is how all bug-fixes should be submitted, obviously.

Is it possible that you are unintentionally using a keyboard shortcut or mouse gesture of some kind? Ctrl-+ and Apple-+ are both defaults, but I've had my wireless keyboard go batshit sometimes and have the control key be not necessary, so any time I type a plus sign, it automatically enlarges my view. I'm wondering if my you have the opposite of this.

Alternatively, one of my laptops is old enough to not have mouse gestures, and my newer mac will let me do the pinch to shrink/ spread to zoom thing. I frequently forget about that and will unintentionally grow my screen by 10 or 25%. For a while, when I was transitioning between the two, it happened enough that I got used to just wacking apple - - until everything went back to normal.
posted by quin at 9:39 AM on April 21, 2015


But my heart still belongs to Coppy.

Clippy and Coppy have nothing on Pushie.
posted by litera scripta manet at 9:41 AM on April 21, 2015


I had the zoom set to 133% at metafilter.com, went off to do my thing, came back to metafilter.com, and now the zoom was set at 110%(!). But now I cannot reproduce the problem, and I feel like an idiot.

First touch screen device I ever used was an Acer all-in-one, a desktop computer built into the back of a large LCD monitor with a touch sensitive front surface. Customer bought it not long after the first release of Windows 7, and got me in to resolve a networking difficulty.

I could not understand why, when my hands were nowhere near the mouse, the cmd window I was trying to type things into kept losing keyboard focus. I'd type a command, then look away for a few seconds to check some lights on a network switch, then type another command which would disappear into the ether because the window didn't have focus any more.

Turns out it was a fly - a very, very small fly - parked on the screen in the top right corner. Every time it moved it took the mouse pointer with it, and its little footsteps were apparently enough to register as clicks.

Fucking touch screens, how do they work?
posted by flabdablet at 12:16 PM on April 21, 2015 [2 favorites]


pb deserves better than being compared to fucking clippy.

To be fair, that was one of the most popular versions of clippy.


"It looks like you're trying to make a copy of yourself..."
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:45 AM on April 22, 2015


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