bordelond reported that the Straight Dope Discourse forum stopped loading on their iPhone 6 running iOS 12.5.4 (later updated to 12.5.5), displaying only a blank white screen despite trying Safari and Chrome. Disabling JavaScript allowed partial access but rendered navigation impractical. They referenced prior threads discussing iOS 12 compatibility issues and asked if Discourse officially supports iOS 12.5.5. david confirmed a recent iOS 12 fix had not yet been deployed to Straight Dope but was expedited; the site should now work. He also noted that Discourse will drop iOS 12 support in January 2023 link. bordelond acknowledged the impending end of support as motivation to upgrade their aging iPhone 6 and humorously noted codinghorror’s presence on the forum. In a follow-up, bordelond confirmed the forum is now working again and thanked david for the quick fix.
Up until the afternoon of Wednesday, May 11, the Discourse forum https:// boards.straightdope. com worked perfectly on my phone. That afternoon, the message board started only displaying a featureless white screen. The condition persists today.
I am using an iPhone 6 that was then running iOS 12.5.4 (now 12.5.5 which is as far as iPhone 6s can go). I have tried the latest Safari version allowable with 12.5.5, and have tried the latest Chrome version I can install (v. 92.0.4515.90 – needs to be at least v. 100 if my research has been accurate). Have not yet tried Firefox or Opera.
In Safari, I CAN view many of the forum contents with Javascript disabled, but so many forum features are disabled that site navigation is difficult. This is a diversionary for-fun message board, so the level of effort sans Javascript isn’t worth it.
Have already read through to the end of the threads below. If I’m following correctly … after the latest Discourse update(s), Discourse forums ARE, indeed, supposed to work on phones running iOS 12.5.5? Or sometimes yes, sometimes no?
Anything further that I should be considering, adjusting, fixing, etc? I am not a software developer or anything, but I am comfortable going through Safari’s Experimental Webkit Features in the iOS Settings – in fact, I’ve tried several of them, but haven’t hit on anything that worked.
Thanks in advance for any advice or assistance anyone may offer.
We had an iOS12 issue last week which has now been fixed. The fix hadn’t yet been rolled out to straightdope. I’ve just expedited that, so it should start working again now. If it’s still broken, please do let us know.
Note that we will be dropping support for iOS 12 in January:
Thanks for the feedback, @david . Many small aggravations with the ol’ iPhone 6 have been cropping up over the past year or so … so the impending sunset of Discourse support will be one more nudge towards getting a “new to me” phone.
( @codinghorror, I thought you were primarily a member over at the SDMB – didn’t realize you were over here, as well )