Pony: Small Fix to Classic Theme on Mobile January 21, 2019 9:11 AM Subscribe
The classic theme on mobile doesn't make it easy for me to make a post in any of the subsites. I have to switch to standard so I can access the new post link, then switch back to continue my mobile responsive experience. Is anyone else experiencing this? May I request a pony that would make this more readily accessible like it is in the other themes please? Thank you!
This pony would allow me to share more FPPs that I come up with while I am out and about, so thank you for considering it.
posted by Hermione Granger at 12:01 PM on January 21, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by Hermione Granger at 12:01 PM on January 21, 2019 [1 favorite]
I love this pony and I want to hug it and kiss it and brush its hair.
classic 4lyfe
posted by billiebee at 12:11 PM on January 21, 2019 [3 favorites]
classic 4lyfe
posted by billiebee at 12:11 PM on January 21, 2019 [3 favorites]
I would like people to adopt the not-so-new theme and not ask the team to fix and old theme not designed for the mobile web.
posted by terrapin at 1:38 PM on January 21, 2019
posted by terrapin at 1:38 PM on January 21, 2019
The new theme looks wonderful on desktop but it hurts my eyes on mobile. Unless the mods assert otherwise all this is = adding links to the bottom of the screen where there aren't any currently.
posted by Hermione Granger at 2:08 PM on January 21, 2019
posted by Hermione Granger at 2:08 PM on January 21, 2019
terrapin, some people have legitimate reasons for preferring the old theme, none of which affect your or anyone else's theme choices at all.
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:29 PM on January 21, 2019 [4 favorites]
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:29 PM on January 21, 2019 [4 favorites]
Yes please! I have reluctantly switched to Modern on my phone (still Classic on desktop) because I think it offers some significant usability improvements, but this is probably the single biggest one of those improvements. I much prefer Classic on the whole and this might be enough to let me switch back to it.
The other big thing would be the top/bottom anchor links. I know how to get to the bottom, but there's no easy way to go back to the top.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 3:59 PM on January 21, 2019 [1 favorite]
The other big thing would be the top/bottom anchor links. I know how to get to the bottom, but there's no easy way to go back to the top.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 3:59 PM on January 21, 2019 [1 favorite]
And yeah, it was explicitly stated that Classic would continue to be fully supported when Modern was rolled out. Unless there's some really good reason why that should officially be no longer the case, I'd very much like to keep it that way.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 4:00 PM on January 21, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 4:00 PM on January 21, 2019 [1 favorite]
I too would enjoy this pony!
posted by soren_lorensen at 4:46 PM on January 21, 2019
posted by soren_lorensen at 4:46 PM on January 21, 2019
Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The, on iOS Safari if you touch the clock at the top of the browser window it will take you to the top of the page.
posted by cgc373 at 8:03 PM on January 21, 2019
posted by cgc373 at 8:03 PM on January 21, 2019
And yeah, it was explicitly stated that Classic would continue to be fully supported when Modern was rolled out. Unless there's some really good reason why that should officially be no longer the case, I'd very much like to keep it that way.
It's been a bumpy stretch of years since then in a bunch of ways, is the main challenge. We've very intentionally kept Classic functional and made a point of rolling out any new features/widgets/etc on both themes despite the duplication of effort involved, but it's an additional challenge to go back and refit stuff into Classic when it wasn't (especially the Classic mobile theme) designed in a future-proofed sort of way.
Totally fine to bring stuff up for us to revisit, and I'll put some focus on it when I can, but there's that line from Top Gun about Maverick's ego writing checks his body can't cash and in this case I guess mathowie is Maverick and I'm his body and I'm also maybe James Tolkan? This metaphor has gotten away from me.
posted by cortex (staff) at 5:14 PM on January 22, 2019 [1 favorite]
It's been a bumpy stretch of years since then in a bunch of ways, is the main challenge. We've very intentionally kept Classic functional and made a point of rolling out any new features/widgets/etc on both themes despite the duplication of effort involved, but it's an additional challenge to go back and refit stuff into Classic when it wasn't (especially the Classic mobile theme) designed in a future-proofed sort of way.
Totally fine to bring stuff up for us to revisit, and I'll put some focus on it when I can, but there's that line from Top Gun about Maverick's ego writing checks his body can't cash and in this case I guess mathowie is Maverick and I'm his body and I'm also maybe James Tolkan? This metaphor has gotten away from me.
posted by cortex (staff) at 5:14 PM on January 22, 2019 [1 favorite]
cgc373, that is amazing, just amazing! Also, it is garbage UI design. How was I ever supposed to find that feature? I'm glad I know it now though!
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 5:29 PM on January 22, 2019
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 5:29 PM on January 22, 2019
Also, that's a bummer to hear although I'd kind of gathered as much already.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 5:31 PM on January 22, 2019
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 5:31 PM on January 22, 2019
Totally understand, Cortex! Thank you!
I will go back to planning how I might help us achieve our ultimate dream of having a maybe native, probably more of a hybrid mobile app
posted by Hermione Granger at 9:45 PM on January 22, 2019
I will go back to planning how I might help us achieve our ultimate dream of having a maybe native, probably more of a hybrid mobile app
posted by Hermione Granger at 9:45 PM on January 22, 2019
cgc373, that is amazing, just amazing! Also, it is garbage UI design. How was I ever supposed to find that feature? I'm glad I know it now though!
You may also like to know that if you touch the clock a second time, it'll jump you back down to where you started. Useful for if you ever hit it by accident, but maybe other times as well. Even less discoverable, though.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 5:42 PM on January 23, 2019
You may also like to know that if you touch the clock a second time, it'll jump you back down to where you started. Useful for if you ever hit it by accident, but maybe other times as well. Even less discoverable, though.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 5:42 PM on January 23, 2019
I hope classic sticks around for a while yet! It loads on my phone while I'm in the forest and keeps me sane!!!! I'm not posting from here, but I appreciate the simple text low key and low-loading complexity. Please don't take it away!!!!!
posted by ChuraChura at 5:30 AM on January 24, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by ChuraChura at 5:30 AM on January 24, 2019 [1 favorite]
I do want to say again without any confusing 80s movie metaphors: I don't have any plans to remove or deprecate Classic. The primary difficulty with Classic is doing extra theme-specific feature implementation for it (which is really doing that for two themes, because Classic mobile is its own distinct code base) beyond the parallel development we already make a point of doing for the new features or site changes we roll out on Modern. It's that bonus retroactive gussying-up stuff that is most likely to be slower, not the basic maintenance.
I have a pie-in-the-sky target of addressing in the long run a lot of the things people prefer Classic to Modern for as improvements or added flexibility in Modern, to create a kind of Classic-in-Modern subtheme, because if we could manage to move folks happily over to that and then run a single codebase that handles folks' differing preferences it'd actually make life a bit simpler and the development and maintenance process saner than the current situation. But that's a big job in its own right and I have no estimates about it yet.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:52 AM on January 24, 2019
I have a pie-in-the-sky target of addressing in the long run a lot of the things people prefer Classic to Modern for as improvements or added flexibility in Modern, to create a kind of Classic-in-Modern subtheme, because if we could manage to move folks happily over to that and then run a single codebase that handles folks' differing preferences it'd actually make life a bit simpler and the development and maintenance process saner than the current situation. But that's a big job in its own right and I have no estimates about it yet.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:52 AM on January 24, 2019
Yellow links. Yellow links! Why are they green?
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 6:41 PM on January 24, 2019
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 6:41 PM on January 24, 2019
Hey, not sure if it's worth making a whole new MeTa about this but it would sure be nice if the themes were labeled in the Settings page. Right now the theme selector looks like this when I'm on my phone, and even as somebody who has good vision and a lot of familiarity with MeFi it takes me a minute to figure out which one is which. If my vision was less good or I had less familiarity, I could see it being basically impossible to know how I'm supposed to choose between the four unlabeled, postage-stamp-sized screen previews on offer.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 4:41 AM on January 25, 2019
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 4:41 AM on January 25, 2019
That's a reasonable point! We ought to put labels on those.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:33 AM on January 25, 2019
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:33 AM on January 25, 2019
(More specifically, as I remember to sip my tea: we ought to make sure labels on those are preserved in Modern's mobile view. We do have them labeled in both Modern and Classic by default, but Modern cuts a lot of elements down when moving into its smallest mobile-oriented view of various pages, and the labels on the selections is apparently one of those trimmed elements. So we should tell it not to do that.)
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:37 AM on January 25, 2019
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:37 AM on January 25, 2019
One could make oneself a bunch of browser bookmarks or profile links to the pages direct?
posted by tilde at 7:56 PM on January 26, 2019
posted by tilde at 7:56 PM on January 26, 2019
Would a custom CSS field in the user settings be doable and helpful to people? I know it's possible with browser extensions on desktop, but as far as I'm aware there's no convenient way to do it on iOS.
posted by lucidium at 8:40 AM on January 27, 2019
posted by lucidium at 8:40 AM on January 27, 2019
also +1 for this, particularly AskMe where you're more likely to be mobile for 'where do I find (this) in (this area)' or general shopping questions.
posted by sexyrobot at 10:56 PM on January 27, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by sexyrobot at 10:56 PM on January 27, 2019 [1 favorite]
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posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 9:12 AM on January 21, 2019 [1 favorite]