We observe that always in our vision are the four lines above the window. They never move away just to make a little more room temporarily for us. So we’re always looking at the “create a new topic” line, which is oddly still there even though that’s exactly what we’re currently doing. And then okay there is the title of the article line, okay but why does that have to stay frozen there? Why can’t it just kind of roll out the way temporarily to give us a little more room. And then there is the ux, the name of the category that I have chosen for posting, but I just chose that, I don’t need to keep on seeing it etc all that could just kind of roll out of the way. Sure you might say my keyboard is rather big, well if I push the cell phone’s back button and it goes away but then the minute I start typing again it comes back to helpfully help me choose letters of course. So I can’t blame it. Oh by the way when I go back and proofread my typing, if I change anything immediately the screen flies all the way down to the bottom. Although thankfully my cursor is still way up where it was, (but off the screen.) Well that’s enough reality for this evening.
Do you encounter this issue on other forum software or social networks?
If you can start writing posts in other software, take screenshots and share with us how they look in each case with your own settings (keyboard size, level of browser zoom…), it might be interesting to compare.
Also your text size is waaay different! If you can read “smilies” on here, why not lower the zoom/text size on chrome so that Discourse text is smaller?
I just want to highlight some discourse features that help on small srceens. I have a very compact phone (Sony Xperia XZ1 compact). So when creating a new topic there are only three lines visible while typing.
I don’t have that option (maybe it depends on the android version).
But since I do not start a topic that often and ever more rarely with my phone, there is no problem for me. For replying the 8 lines are enough
Interesting on the previous screenshot the Discourse header wasn’t visible but on this one it is
It’s available since Android 10 I think? So every phone still supported by the manufacture will have it. For people using phones dropped by the manufacturer custom roms like LineageOS are the only way AFAIK
Also, I find it weird that lots of screenshots of people on this topic with small phones have enabled a dedicated number row on their keyboards. Not even the iPad keyboard have a dedicated number row
I did not know disabling that was an option. I could have made use of that a few times, even if it only snuck in an extra line or two.
I think the main crux is the title, category and tag block, as you don’t really need that on screen the whole time. I don’t know if there’s any nifty solution to tuck that away somewhere and bring it out only when wanted, but that might increase the available space for more involved OPs on your phone.
I’ve made quite a few bigger topics on my phone, and it can get a little claustrophobic at times. There are some good tips in here so far though, and I’d wished I’d known about some of them sooner.
Android keyboards are super customizable since early Android 2.x days!
It’s was impossible to set tags for topics on mobile for most of Discourse life. It was only added when most phones became larger, making it possible to accommodate it.
Also worth linking to the original topic on this area
Ha. I refuse to be keyboard-shamed. The keyboard pops up, I type in it. That is about the limit of my relationship with it.
I definitely think it should be in there. I used to use my mobile for everything Discourse-related, and I like that almost everything possible on the desktop is mirrored on the mobile version. This is for sure a good thing. I was more thinking about how often I would need that info on my screen when editing an OP. If space was tight, collapsing the ‘OP block’ at the top to reclaim some content space would be pretty sweet.
It’s like some SMS app. Or maybe some tweet where there’s a character limit.
Sure, more lines if you don’t mind disposing of your keyboard every time you need to take a look at what you typed.
If this were desktop, I just hit some button and emacs would pop up and I could edit in the dedicated editor and then when I was finished I could send it back to the app.
No, users shouldn’t be required to reconfigure their cell phones just to use this one app.
Okay on the first one I forgot to put the keyboard up. But you get the idea. Anyway the challenge is to find an input box as small as Discourse’s. SMS apps are disqualified from this competition.
I’m really not convinced there’s any merit to this topic.
The original post includes a screenshot which appears to have been created by requesting the desktop version of the site. The mobile view when starting a topic or reply doesn’t include the top bar seen below:
50% of the above is taken up with a keyboard including number row, the android bar along the bottom, and a suggestion bar. It reminds me of IE toolbar hell.
This is what the New Topic interface actually looks like:
I could have made use of that a few times, even if it only snuck in an extra line or two.
I was more thinking about how often I would need that info on my screen when editing an OP. If space was tight, collapsing the ‘OP block’ at the top to reclaim some content space would be pretty sweet.
