META: Mobile Experience
From some things I have read, the Mobile Apps will not be updated.
This is due to the site being optimized for viewing on Mobile devices.
Sounds good - but seeing a few quirks.
My biggest one is that I can't seem to find the Diaries on a mobile device.
Am I blind?
Post below any other quirks you have found that might be helpful to pass on to the team and HUEL!
You also can't log-out on mobile -- at least I can't -- when I touch the "person" to try to log-out of my account, nothing happens. I only care because I'm still on a random account on there due to the whole "too many times logging-in IP locked" problem everyone was having.
Also, just to clarify -- some people were saying voting works on the main page? I still see none.
Why the Hell would you ever want to logout???
Oh. Multiple profiles.
WD - is that you?
/s
Nah, it's just Rolldamntide.
Apparently the new site can bring people back from the dead, which is nice.
When I go to the Blog via iPhone or iPad I get the "transition" version, not the new and improved version. Anybody else having this problem and how do I fix it for my mobile devices. If I see that yellow again my head is going to explode
put a / at the end of mgoblog.com, that will trick your browser into grabbing the new version instead of serving you what it has cached.
You need to clear your cache. Easiest way to do that on chrome is to remove the browsing history.
Tried to remove cache but nothing. Will try the / trick to see if that works.
I had this too. Using Safari I clicked the refresh circle at the top and it brought up the new site. Before I did that I could close Safari, reopen it, click on my bookmark and it would always pull the transition site
You have to scroll all the way to the bottom of the page.
It might be a pain, but I like(d) the app(s) better, at least when they were working. I'm not a huge fan of "mobile-responsive" sites only. They're kind of annoying to navigate on a smart phone. (I know TTB doesn't have an app, but I would develop one if I had the time and resources.)
Agreed. The MgoBlog HD app was the best way to view the site. I was pretty bummed when it got the ax, but even the official app was relatively well designed and a better interface than the mobile site.
I hardly ever use a browser on my phone. Going to take some getting used to, I suppose...
It still annoys me that Brian and the guys couldn't have teamed up with the guy who made MGoBlog HD to update the site and continue using that app, because it was easily the best way to use the site.
Agreed, going to miss the app
Yep. I’m not a fan of the new site on mobile... I’ve just resigned myself to the fact that the HD app was the best way to view the site and that it will never be matched so I shouldn’t hope for it to be.
The new site on mobile is something I’ll probably get used to and it’s better than 2.0 but is just doesn’t seem smooth at all compared to the HD app.
A couple observations:
- why can I not edit my posts?
- the “search” thing looks weird. No blue below the search field, just looks strange.
- can’t click the person icon
- the board is super hard to get to on mobile. Holy cow. It either takes 3 clicks on the menu or scrolling all the way down to bottom of page.
Agree 100%. The new site on mobile is just wonky. Navigating to the board or diaries isn’t as easy as it should be. Comments seem to be formatted weird too.
It's my understanding that that guy didn't want to team up, or come to any agreement with Brian about accessing the site through his app. Don't know the terms of what Brian asked for (or the app guy), but I do remember Brian saying something to this affect when the HD app went away.
I agree also. I had the official app I guess? I think the HD was only for iPhones right? There was a lot you couldn't do but it was so smooth because it was stripped down.
Agreed. I much prefer a app
Choosing to re-order to Newest First doesn’t work.
If click the "Read more" button afterwards, it works for that post. However, unless I'm missing something, there's currently no way to save that setting preference.
viewing this website on a mobile device is horrible. No joke, when I first saw the redesign a couple days ago I could have sworn the blog got hacked and taken over by trolls. It looks that bad...
I still can't vote on anything.
My gripes so far, only viewing the blog on my phone:
1) everything is huge. I'm spending a ton of time scrolling, and even the shortest board threads seem endless.
1b) for instance, Magnus' post below fills 2/3 of my screen
2) tougher to tell whose response is to whose message
3) takes more clicks or more scrolling to navigate to the message board. I really valued reading the front page story and glancing at the message board topics to see if anything caught my interest. Now I have to decide to go there and spend time getting there.
Conclusion: things which were previously quick are now taking a lot more time and effort.
Oh yes, and it would be nice to be able to edit my comments.
Strong YES to everything his holiness Pope Lando just said.
Strong YES to everything his holiness Pope Lando just said.
Strong YES to everything his holiness Pope Lando just said.
Strong YES to everything his holiness Pope Lando just said.
Enough already!
Ditto #2. Wow.
Also what’s with all the blank white space on the left side of every comment?
Did anyone at HURL actually look at the site on mobile before releasing it?
HURL...
Not sure if that was intentional or not, but this made me giggle.
FWIW it is easier to tell who replied to who if you turn your phone sideways. This shouldn’t be required though to be able to make any sense of a thread. Kind of annoying and seems like a design flaw they would have worked out.
Excellent advice. And you are correct. Still annoying to do but more clear at least.
The Who replied to who is a good one. I really can’t tell after the first reply.
Those aren't gripes, rather hard truths. This layout is funky and bulky.
**It feels like I'm stuck on one user's comment for too long. Other times, I'm wandering around the site, lost, not exactly sure what to click on.
Cosign all of these. I understand the proprietors wouldn't have done it without serious technical necessity (e.g. stability, etc) but the user experience has really taken a hit. The visual design of the old one had better definition in the visual set-offs (for example, from one comment to another, from one post to another) and was much "cleaner" to my mind.
On the upside, I'm already more productive at everything else in my life. So there's that.
Plus ça change.
Your username is blasphemous.
Mgoblog should fire its product manager. Oh wait: It's a bunch of journos randomly trying their hand at tech? Well that explains this clusterf* of a launch.
BRING BACK THE APP!!!
Side note: everyone is super touchy on twitter about this
You’re just a bundle of joy. I think a lot of the issues are that some folks aren’t as tech savvy as they think they are. I’ve read quite a few folks don’t even know how to clear their cache. Some folks are still seeing the geocities fake page as a result. But go on, just blame the people who did all the work on the improvements for your own incompetence. Seems par for the course in this day and age.
LOL. The only incompetence here is in the release of the new site. It took 18 months and they reduced the user value in the process. The mobile App was a critical part of the user experience; replacing it with a responsive web page was an uninformed decision.
The website failed to grok their users. Please don't lecture anyone on incompetence when you lack context. Maybe next time you'll realize your attacking someone who does this for a living
I think the context is pretty clear. You contributed nothing to the new website but are perfectly capable of bitching about it. I think most people can stand criticism, the folks who run this site have offered an open channel to improvements, but what you are doing is just bitching.
There are many people on this blog who do web design and site architecture for a living. Why don’t you post a few links of work you have done and let the other experts offer their “feedback”.
If there is anything I have learned, everyone is an expert when it comes to web design and most have no damn clue what they are talking about because they can’t think of an audience beyond themself.
This is true with respect to the way some people offer criticism, however, with any new launch or change, the proprietor (either directly or indirectly) invites commentary and constructive feedback on the change. Change for the sake of change is crap. I think Brian, et. al. are trying to improve their site and it's good for us as a community to offer feedback.
BTW Seth mentioned on Reddit that the reason for the mobile app going away is how it retrieved data. That process put a major demand on the servers and frequently crashed the site during high-traffic times. It seems like a technical fix that can be done and we could get the app back with enough end-user demand.
I run iOS 11.4 and use Chrome to access the site. Much improved mobile version, imho.
It'd be nice just to have an app for the board. I have no issue reading front page content on the wctuac site, but the board is confusing as hell on the site (as opposed to the basic Android app). The website arranges posts by last comment date. Is there a way to organize by the time they were posted? That's why I liked the app -- it'd just show "posted 45 mins ago" "posted 2 hours ago" "posted 4 hours ago" and so on. It was an easy way to check for breaking news without hopping on the site or on Twitter.
Unless I'm really confused, aren't the posts still ordered by when they were actually created? They don't show when they were posted anymore (and instead show when the last comment was made), but they are still ordered by when they were posted.
This is what I’ve seen as well. Viewing on Safari and Chrome.