META: Mobile Experience

Submitted by boliver46 on

From some things I have read, the Mobile Apps will not be updated. 

This is due to the site being optimized for viewing on Mobile devices.  

Sounds good - but seeing a few quirks.

My biggest one is that I can't seem to find the Diaries on a mobile device.

Am I blind? 

Post below any other quirks you have found that might be helpful to pass on to the team and HUEL!

 

The Maize Halo

June 6th, 2018 at 5:21 PM ^

You also can't log-out on mobile -- at least I can't -- when I touch the "person" to try to log-out of my account, nothing happens. I only care because I'm still on a random account on there due to the whole "too many times logging-in IP locked" problem everyone was having.

Also, just to clarify -- some people were saying voting works on the main page?  I still see none.

Yooper

June 6th, 2018 at 5:24 PM ^

When I go to the Blog via iPhone or iPad I get the "transition" version, not the new and improved version.  Anybody else having this problem and how do I fix it for my mobile devices.  If I see that yellow again my head is going to explode

Magnus

June 6th, 2018 at 5:28 PM ^

It might be a pain, but I like(d) the app(s) better, at least when they were working. I'm not a huge fan of "mobile-responsive" sites only. They're kind of annoying to navigate on a smart phone. (I know TTB doesn't have an app, but I would develop one if I had the time and resources.)

taistreetsmyhero

June 6th, 2018 at 5:35 PM ^

Agreed. The MgoBlog HD app was the best way to view the site. I was pretty bummed when it got the ax, but even the official app was relatively well designed and a better interface than the mobile site.

I hardly ever use a browser on my phone. Going to take some getting used to, I suppose...

maizenbluedevil

June 6th, 2018 at 6:02 PM ^

Yep. I’m not a fan of the new site on mobile... I’ve just resigned myself to the fact that the HD app was the best way to view the site and that it will never be matched so I shouldn’t hope for it to be. 

The new site on mobile is something I’ll probably get used to and it’s better than 2.0 but is just doesn’t seem smooth at all compared to the HD app. 

maizenbluedevil

June 6th, 2018 at 6:05 PM ^

A couple observations:

- why can I not edit my posts? 

- the “search” thing looks weird. No blue below the search field, just looks strange. 

- can’t click the person icon 

- the board is super hard to get to on mobile. Holy cow. It either takes 3 clicks on the menu or scrolling all the way down to bottom of page. 

1VaBlue1

June 6th, 2018 at 9:53 PM ^

It's my understanding that that guy didn't want to team up, or come to any agreement with Brian about accessing the site through his app.  Don't know the terms of what Brian asked for (or the app guy), but I do remember Brian saying something to this affect when the HD app went away.

ska4punkkid

June 6th, 2018 at 5:33 PM ^

viewing this website on a mobile device is horrible. No joke, when I first saw the redesign a couple days ago I could have sworn the blog got hacked and taken over by trolls. It looks that bad...

PopeLando

June 6th, 2018 at 5:37 PM ^

My gripes so far, only viewing the blog on my phone: 

1) everything is huge. I'm spending a ton of time scrolling, and even the shortest board threads seem endless. 

1b) for instance, Magnus' post below fills 2/3 of my screen

2) tougher to tell whose response is to whose message 

3) takes more clicks or more scrolling to navigate to the message board. I really valued reading the front page story and glancing at the message board topics to see if anything caught my interest. Now I have to decide to go there and spend time getting there.

Conclusion: things which were previously quick are now taking a lot more time and effort. 

Sopwith

June 7th, 2018 at 12:06 AM ^

Cosign all of these. I understand the proprietors wouldn't have done it without serious technical necessity (e.g. stability, etc) but the user experience has really taken a hit. The visual design of the old one had better definition in the visual set-offs (for example, from one comment to another, from one post to another) and was much "cleaner" to my mind.

On the upside, I'm already more productive at everything else in my life. So there's that.

Plus ça change.

Sinsoftheschafer

June 6th, 2018 at 5:41 PM ^

Mgoblog should fire its product manager.  Oh wait: It's a bunch of journos randomly trying their hand at tech?  Well that explains this clusterf* of a launch.

 

BRING BACK THE APP!!!

Side note: everyone is super touchy on twitter about this

mgowill

June 6th, 2018 at 8:52 PM ^

You’re just a bundle of joy. I think a lot of the issues are that some folks aren’t as tech savvy as they think they are. I’ve read quite a few folks don’t even know how to clear their cache. Some folks are still seeing the geocities fake page as a result. But go on, just blame the people who did all the work on the improvements for your own incompetence. Seems par for the course in this day and age. 

Sinsoftheschafer

June 6th, 2018 at 9:38 PM ^

LOL.  The only incompetence here is in the release of the new site.  It took 18 months and they reduced the user value in the process.  The mobile App was a critical part of the user experience; replacing it with a responsive web page was an uninformed decision.

The website failed to grok their users.  Please don't lecture anyone on incompetence when you lack context.  Maybe next time you'll realize your attacking someone who does this for a living

trueblueintexas

June 7th, 2018 at 12:11 AM ^

There are many people on this blog who do web design and site architecture for a living. Why don’t you post a few links of work you have done and let the other experts offer their “feedback”. 

If there is anything I have learned, everyone is an expert when it comes to web design and most have no damn clue what they are talking about because they can’t think of an audience beyond themself. 

Hemlock Philosopher

June 7th, 2018 at 8:01 AM ^

This is true with respect to the way some people offer criticism, however, with any new launch or change, the proprietor (either directly or indirectly) invites commentary and constructive feedback on the change. Change for the sake of change is crap. I think Brian, et. al. are trying to improve their site and it's good for us as a community to offer feedback. 

BTW Seth mentioned on Reddit that the reason for the mobile app going away is how it retrieved data. That process put a major demand on the servers and frequently crashed the site during high-traffic times. It seems like a technical fix that can be done and we could get the app back with enough end-user demand. 

RobM_24

June 6th, 2018 at 5:53 PM ^

It'd be nice just to have an app for the board. I have no issue reading front page content on the wctuac site, but the board is confusing as hell on the site (as opposed to the basic Android app). The website arranges posts by last comment date. Is there a way to organize by the time they were posted? That's why I liked the app -- it'd just show "posted 45 mins ago" "posted 2 hours ago" "posted 4 hours ago" and so on. It was an easy way to check for breaking news without hopping on the site or on Twitter.