it would be great to have the image preview while posting from smartphone or maybe a switch to toggle between image preview and link-code.
do Tou think this would be a nice feature?
1 Like
we should allow a “preview” button for mobile, I agree with that.
6 Likes
my consideration starts from the public. “normal people” like images, not code.
I would love a preview button. For images but also for the whole post. Things that are effortless to type on a computer can be very complicated on a phone. It takes 14 keystrokes to type [/quote] on my iPhone. The extra steps increase the likelihood of mistakes. Being able to see what I’m going to get would make me feel a lot better, and I think it would be even more beneficial to people who have never used any sort of code before. A lot of people are deeply confused when they try to end a post with a hashtag and end up with a heading.
2 Likes
I hope this feature will be interesting for many because I have in my actual phpbb forum many people writing posts with many images and without a preview this can become confusing.
Can We hope in a future release?
Since running the following performance log analysis and looking at the stats for the posts/create (POST) route…
It appears that on one of my Discourse based communities perhaps as much as 52.94% of posts yesterday were created via mobile vs. desktop interface (excluding email).
Just thought is was interesting.
2 Likes
How much formatting are people actually doing on mobile? I’d wager not much since even a simple thing like double asterisks for bold is three taps per asterisk, a total of 12 taps…
Typing words is quite easy though, and what kind of preview do you need for words?
Even got adding an image, you get a preview of the image at the time you add it through the device.
Here is the preview I see while adding an image on “mobile”, iPad but the process is virtually identical on iPhone:
Note that the image selected is quite clearly shown.
You already have an image preview on selection on Android too…
Something like this depending on your preferences and OS version:
However edits can be difficult with the long filenames in the content area:
I personally was imagining a preview button to allow checking of formatting, images and overall post before committing to it.
1 Like
That is fine, I just question how much formatting anyone does on mobile. A simple asterisk, 3 taps. A bracket, 3 taps. It is excruciating to type anything but simple A-Z and enter on a touchscreen device with on screen keyboard.
For example how much formatting is in this post?
For that matter, how many images? I bet people typically post one image, if they post an image.
These advanced editing scenarios with lots of formatting, lots of images… are they common on mobile? I highly doubt it.
More likely lots of images for me…
I see people go to events and want to get the images up to share them - they don’t have a computer - just the mobile, perhaps a tablet as well (but they are rare).
Agreed regarding the very little formatting - the formatting I usually do is backticks for code - but I’m an extreme case typing code out on that on screen keyboard - sometimes you don’t have a choice.
1 Like
Regardless, if you add 5 images to a post, you selected each of those 5 images using a visual image picker. So at the time of adding the images, there was an image preview.
I have seen posts created with broken images, I’m guessing by users clicking into the middle of URL’s before then selecting upload again.
It should also be noted that my device is MASSIVE resolution wise and not very common, things are far more cramped input / keyboard wise on other Android devices.
Yes but that implies a different fix, ensure that images are not added in the middle of other tags, or simply force images to be at the bottom of the post when inserted.
I feel like mobile preview is really not the root issue here, as formatting on mobile will be statistically nonexistent, and adding images has a device level preview for each inserted image anyway…
Perhaps image inserts could be completed via a short code / reference number of types for the images that have been inserted so instead of this:
https://assets-meta-cdck-prod-meta.s3.dualstack.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/optimized/3X/b/8/b82fe4f022624070ede526a4ae3921d6fb62a31f_1_281x500.png
It’s simply [image1].
Yes, that sort of thing. I feel like we are treating the symptom and not the disease here with this preview request.
It’s not really useful on an iPhone because the thumbnails are so tiny. Maybe it looks ok on a 6s, but on a 6 or smaller, I always end up closing the browser, going to my camera roll, finding the picture I want, favoriting it, then going back to the browser and selecting the picture from my favorites, out of paranoia that I’ll accidentally post the wrong picture. (And then going back to albums to remove it from favorites.)
I know I’m probably an outlier, but I use plenty of formatting and am usually on mobile.
I think polls make a good argument for a preview. They require formatting to function, and once you hit send for the first time, the clock is ticking, because if you don’t manage to get it straightened out in 5 minutes, it’s broken forever.
1 Like
On meta we sit at 6.3% content creation via mobile. On imgur it is almost double at 11%.
I think there is a very strong use case for improving the mobile composer, we show so much shit on the screen in mobile, it bounces around, tons of stupid margin, top 30% of the screen is a useless crop.
There is a very strong use case for a mobile composer reboot, part of it should be allowing for the more advanced use cases of formatting and preview, the focus though should be simplification and elimination of crap from the UI. Then a simple “more” button can enable advance controls.
First order of operation is a full screen composer on mobile. That is the most urgent fix.
11 Likes
I do like being able to look at the post I’m replying to, but I suppose hiding the editor is sufficient for that.