Discourse on Surface Duo

Would you really use it in non-flipped form? The tertiary screen on the outside is kind of a different topic IMO.

Half-flipped though?

I dunno, half-flipped is like ā€œcurved versus not curved monitorā€ā€¦ does it really matter? Itā€™s aesthetics, isnā€™t it?

Well, more than just aesthetics!

The same goes for the Galaxy Z Flip. Forbes said it best!

Curved monitors are unpleasant (subjective) when displaying primarily text and unsuited for it, they distort long runs of text and make it appear as though lines are not straight horizontally. How much of an impact it has is of course dependent on the radius of the curve.

The Galaxy Z Flip, in a half open state, I think is in an entirely separate category. Rather than affecting the text across the device, itā€™s only a line of text on the fold thatā€™s likely to be distorted and I donā€™t think itā€™s unreasonable for something like Discourse to simply display as normal across the fold and let the user scroll as appropriate.

Iā€™m sure there are use cases but Iā€™m unclear as to why someone would want to use the phone in a half-open state, putting one or both halves of the display at a sub-optimal viewing angle. Playing Battleship opposite someone with another Z Flip?

I mostly agree in the context of handheld gaming devices and the Nintendo Switch not featuring that behaviour suggests Nintendo might agree too, though I do feel that the onus was more on the game developers to produce something that worked well across the two screens - which many failed to achieve - rather than the format being inherently flawed.

I do fully agree with the Wii U. Iā€™m not going to hold it in front of me the entire time I play, I would want to lower the controller to my lap but I would also want the information on that screen in my view.

I donā€™t think that is a good comparison for devices like the Surface Duo, however. A closer comparison would be someone who uses a desktop computer with two displays - someone is unlikely to spread a single browser window across both because it will not provide a useful, cohesive experience.

That said, on a single display the master-detail view model is a very successful one prevalent across software in which navigation of a set list of sources is useful. Discourse could be a good candidate for that model irrespective of dual screen devices.

In a browser wide enough it might be a useful option to show the categories/latest/etc. view centred as it is, then shift to the left side and open a topic view on the right side when clicking on a topic - reversed for a RTL language.

My feelings are that dual screen mobile devices are not a meaningful development target for Discourse yet, if they ever will be. If the master-detail model was deemed worthwhile generally though, it would be good to keep them in mind while implementing it.

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You cannot be sure if the text will be distorted or not?

Take a look at this.

At the bare minimum, Discourse should be able to automatically adapt from the mobile view to the desktop view (and vice versa) depending on which display is being used.

Of course - I just meant the fold is the only place where it might be distorted while half open, so it probably doesnā€™t need any attention for Discourse to work fine whether fully open or half open.

Presumably weā€™re talking about the Z Fold 3 here. I agree that it would ideally be able to switch between mobile and desktop layouts when it hits certain sizes, then switching between front and interior displays would naturally trigger that as the browser resizes. It appears that it currently just uses the browser user agent at the time the page loads to decide which to use.

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Due to the crease?

Responsive web design comes to mind.

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Yep, the sharp curve at the point where it folds. Text might be perfectly readable in that space, if that is the case then it further strengthens my opinion that Discourse doesnā€™t need to treat that and similar devices any differently whether half or fully open.

Devices like the Z Fold 3, as you reference, could be dealt with by general purpose responsiveness. I donā€™t believe that this is really a bare minimum requirement though - the mobile view in a wider space is not perfect but itā€™s functional.

The user might benefit from it switching to the desktop view when opening the device to the interior display but they can still do everything with the mobile view. If itā€™s a significant amount of work to support mobile<->desktop responsiveness, it may not be worthwhile doing that for a minority on foldables who already have an entirely functional experience.

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The crease isnā€™t noticeable from normal viewing angles.

The mobile view is spaced out too much on larger devices. Thereā€™s a bit of wasted space.

Check this out: How much longer does it take to produce a responsive design for a website on average? - Quora

Meta on the Galaxy Z Fold 3







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Are you able to take any screenshots with the default Discourse theme?

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Nice graphical summary.

I have to say, whilst foldables and ā€œduosā€ (how much?!) might be a tiny market, I really like the master, detail concept which presumably would be Topic List, Topic for Discourse. An architecture which facilitated that would be really nice :+1:

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Samsung is focusing all in on foldable devices now.

I got a cheap Surface Duo for $390 with tax and shipping, and it is update-able to Android 11 so Iā€™ll give it a try.

(There is a Surface Duo 2 now, so this is the older model.)

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Microsoft didnā€™t make Android 11 available to the Surface Duo until just recently. I had to return mine because it was a buggy mess. Android 11 didnā€™t seem to help (and Iā€™m clearly not alone in thinking that).


From what Iā€™ve heard, the experience is a whole lot better on the Surface Duo 2, but I hope your experience with it has at least been okay so far? How well does it work with Discourse?

I donā€™t know, I donā€™t have it yet.

Ah, okay. When will you be receiving it?

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I have it now. Pretty great deal for $350, Speedometer 2.0 score of around 47, which puts it at around 2016 iPhone 7 level of performanceā€¦ fun to play around with at that price, but thereā€™s a giant seam between the two screens.

Even unfolded itā€™s not really big enough to be a proper tablet, so it feels like a bit of a no-mans-land to meā€¦?


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