# Discourse create new topic user experience on mobile
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-create-new-topic-user-experience-on-mobile/53632
**Category:** UX
**Created:** [12월 1, 2016, 3:31오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-create-new-topic-user-experience-on-mobile/53632 "2016-12-01T15:31:10Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [12월 2, 2016, 10:07오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-create-new-topic-user-experience-on-mobile/53632/21 "2016-12-02T22:07:45Z")
> [@vulkanino](#):
>
> I agree with the OP, I have an iPhone 7 plus and my Discourse installation is hardly usable there, other than reading.
Er what? I use the iPhone 7 with Discourse literally daily and I have no such issues.
The OP was talking about new topic creation, which I agree was a blind spot because I just don’t tend to _create_ topics on mobile, **I read and reply as 99% of my activity time on mobile**. I suspect that’s true of most people as well.
> [@Tom\_Newsom](#):
>
> what should be a single indivisible object (an image)
The only alternative is this, but it has no provision for width or height:
``
Most of that “computerese” is the path to the image. Compare with this:
``
I suggest taking this to a different topic, though.. further elaboration on it here is intensely off-topic.
> [@jesscmc](#):
>
> Re formatting toolbar, have also noticed (on mobile Safari on my iphone 6, anyway) that if you type something, then decide to format it, and you’re on the first line, you can’t actually use the formatting buttons as the iOS tooltips completely cover them:
Toolbars are generally quite crap on mobile for a variety of reasons. I wasn’t too happy that @sam brought them back, but there are a handful of power user things that can’t be done without them (like replying as a whisper, etc).
Anyway, better for this topic to stay focused on Create New Topic improvements.
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### Author:  [@charleswalter](https://meta.discourse.org/u/charleswalter)
#### Post date: [12월 3, 2016, 3:46오전 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-create-new-topic-user-experience-on-mobile/53632/22 "2016-12-03T03:46:35Z")
Seems pretty smooth @sam
I wonder how important it is to be able to see all fields at once. The composer field seems short compared to the reply window
What if as soon as you tapped into a larger compose window, it just scrolled the page down so the the post button could be visible?
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### Author:  [@charleswalter](https://meta.discourse.org/u/charleswalter)
#### Post date: [12월 3, 2016, 3:49오전 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-create-new-topic-user-experience-on-mobile/53632/23 "2016-12-03T03:49:27Z")
Another note, on our community we sort all our categories alphabetically, but showing the hierarchy on the dropdown makes it difficult to use the selector. Perhaps if there was an easy wat to target the first category, we could hide them…
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [12월 3, 2016, 3:52오전 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-create-new-topic-user-experience-on-mobile/53632/24 "2016-12-03T03:52:26Z")
This is another argument in favor of typing to complete category rather than making people scroll through a list as I have suggested multiple times in this topic.
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### Author:  [@charleswalter](https://meta.discourse.org/u/charleswalter)
#### Post date: [12월 3, 2016, 3:53오전 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-create-new-topic-user-experience-on-mobile/53632/25 "2016-12-03T03:53:56Z")
Sounds like a good option to let the community admin decide. Dropdown makes sense for less than 10 categories I imagine
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [12월 4, 2016, 4:06오전 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-create-new-topic-user-experience-on-mobile/53632/26 "2016-12-04T04:06:38Z")
Or as @mcwumbly suggested make category selection a full screen modal affair.
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### Author:  [@jesscmc](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jesscmc)
#### Post date: [12월 5, 2016, 10:26오전 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-create-new-topic-user-experience-on-mobile/53632/27 "2016-12-05T10:26:07Z")
I’'m not sure about type-to-complete category - if you’re newish, or not a daily user of the community, how would you know what to type? A two-step process or perhaps a simpler dropdown without the descriptive text for each category might be better.
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### Author:  [@featheredtoast](https://meta.discourse.org/u/featheredtoast)
#### Post date: [12월 5, 2016, 4:42오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-create-new-topic-user-experience-on-mobile/53632/28 "2016-12-05T16:42:59Z")
I was under the impression that the select dropdown wasn’t going anywhere; but it would have the same kind of type-to-complete as the desktop experience does currently. Then selecting a topic could keep focus on the autocomplete element. This in turn would keep your keyboard, so as to not have the composer “jump” when the keyboard disappears.
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### Author:  [@ljpp](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ljpp)
#### Post date: [12월 13, 2016, 9:28오전 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-create-new-topic-user-experience-on-mobile/53632/29 "2016-12-13T09:28:23Z")
Great to see discussion on improving the mobile experience. It is truly a mobile first world - in many countries the 50:50 in between mobile and desktop happened quite some time ago, and now mobile has globally surpassed desktop. It is also worth mentioning that in the developing countries the peoples’ first internet enabled device is very likely **a mobile** (of a lower price category). So they do not walk the desktop-laptop-smartphone path, but go straight to mobile.
That said, I don’t have a silver bullet how the mobile UX should be optimized. The screen estate remains to be a challenge. Proposed solutions may call for some A/B testing?
One thing that works particularly poorly in mobile is **topic templates**. They are not great on desktop and are close to unusable for mobile topic creation.
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### Author:  [@charleswalter](https://meta.discourse.org/u/charleswalter)
#### Post date: [1월 11, 2017, 4:58오전 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-create-new-topic-user-experience-on-mobile/53632/30 "2017-01-11T04:58:26Z")
I just noticed that on desktop, there’s a auto-complete for category selection. Is this new in 1.7 or had I just never seen it before? Any reason why not to add it to mobile?
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [1월 11, 2017, 5:04오전 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-create-new-topic-user-experience-on-mobile/53632/31 "2017-01-11T05:04:57Z")
Keyboard pop is very disruptive and not to be done lightly. You immediately destroy half the screen.
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### Author:  [@ljpp](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ljpp)
#### Post date: [3월 2, 2017, 4:06오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-create-new-topic-user-experience-on-mobile/53632/32 "2017-03-02T16:06:54Z")
This would fit any topic that concerns mobile, but I’ll use this one, as it is rather recent. Some statistics worth having a look:
>
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [3월 2, 2017, 11:40오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-create-new-topic-user-experience-on-mobile/53632/33 "2017-03-02T23:40:16Z")
Of that “smartphone users” we are only addressing people with a device from 2014 onward, realistically. Anything older will be brutal.
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### Author:  [@Pad\_Pors](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Pad_Pors)
#### Post date: [4월 3, 2017, 2:56오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-create-new-topic-user-experience-on-mobile/53632/34 "2017-04-03T14:56:33Z")
one of our users has shared his hard experience in creating topic in a lumia 640 xl windows phone,
they have less space in mobile UI when they want to create topic:
does it have anything to do with our website or is it how it should be as a discourse platform?
the browser is edge.
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [4월 3, 2017, 3:47오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-create-new-topic-user-experience-on-mobile/53632/35 "2017-04-03T15:47:54Z")
We can’t really support Windows Phone effectively as it is too odd, and the market share is incredibly tiny.
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### Author:  [@madrush](https://meta.discourse.org/u/madrush)
#### Post date: [4월 3, 2017, 7:54오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-create-new-topic-user-experience-on-mobile/53632/36 "2017-04-03T19:54:08Z")
I’ve had a user recently report that she can’t use our forum (besides for reading only) on her 8" Galaxy Tab 4, which is a 2014 device.
This is not only ‘Create Topic’ specific problem, but also applies to replies. Here is the screenshot she shared:
Shouldn’t the header of the page disappear up, as it does on my iPhone 5S (both in portrait and landscape) when the keyboard appears, so that you can see at least a little of the editor window?
Here is the editor appearance on my iPhone screen, which is well smaller than the Tab 4.
It’s not great. But it gives me a few lines to see what I’m typing, which is good.
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [4월 4, 2017, 12:48오전 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-create-new-topic-user-experience-on-mobile/53632/37 "2017-04-04T00:48:28Z")
She will need to rotate her device.
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### Author:  [@riking](https://meta.discourse.org/u/riking)
#### Post date: [4월 4, 2017, 1:56오전 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-create-new-topic-user-experience-on-mobile/53632/38 "2017-04-04T01:56:57Z")
Or get a different keyboard - that thing’s taking a larger than normal fraction of the screen area!
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### Author:  [@Falco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Falco)
#### Post date: [4월 4, 2017, 2:09오전 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-create-new-topic-user-experience-on-mobile/53632/39 "2017-04-04T02:09:35Z")
Also the combination of:
- Firefox Mobile with always show tabs (takes space)
- Firefox Mobile showing location bar when user has scrolled past top (takes space)
- Website with top-navigation bar that doesn’t hides on scroll (takes space)
is very bad.
The pseudo app on Chrome [Add to Homescreen](https://meta.discourse.org/t/add-to-homescreen-banner-on-android/42973) will give you a lot more space.
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### Author:  [@Pad\_Pors](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Pad_Pors)
#### Post date: [5월 28, 2017, 2:00오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-create-new-topic-user-experience-on-mobile/53632/40 "2017-05-28T14:00:51Z")
one of users with HTC desire 728, Google chrome sent us this screenshot:
then when she use the `Request desktop site ` things goes to normal. 😕 is it ok?
> [@Falco](#):
>
> Website with top-navigation bar that doesn’t hides on scroll (takes space)
is there an option for this or should we do this via css?
[이전 페이지](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-create-new-topic-user-experience-on-mobile/53632.md?page=1)
[다음 페이지](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-create-new-topic-user-experience-on-mobile/53632.md?page=3)