Mobile Composer | Placement of Menus > Bottom
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@phenomlab There is a good argument to use modal menu to access formatting buttons, and maybe more thus increasing on screen typing space and avoiding such problems.
The bottom line is the controls when writing a post should be at the bottom naturally within Harmony theme (Browsers and mobile OS be dammed!) and initially reactions were positive toward this layout, a good start, maybe this topic is a good indicator and even proof of the value of the proposition.
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I believe it is possible but would require a restructure of the composer window. When the mobile browser resizes to accommodate the keyboard, the viewport merely shifts up, but in the case of the composer, there is an established height, and that might be part of the issue.
NodeBB is not notified when a viewport resizes due to keyboard opening/closing.
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@phenomlab said in Mobile Composer | Placement of Menus > Bottom:
makes posting even harder
You say it right @phenomlab, posting on mobile is already hard if you don't post only plain text.
While the editor is still quite easy to use on the desktop, it can be really cumbersome on the smartphone to just insert a link with text, especially for older, non-code-savvy people. I can't say it any other way - I'm sure many of my users are overwhelmed with the editor:
Very often in my forum a link is posted with the link text "Link Text" because that's what the composer generates when you want to post a link. I'm glad if they at least understand that you have to replace "Link Address" with the actual URL. I also often see broken links, because it is prone to errors if you have to replace some text within brackets for example.
Recently a user wrote that it's a shame that you can't post pictures from the internet or your own gallery from your smartphone. I just thought "Wtf?!". The user simply couldn't find the relevant buttons. I really had to told him that you can swipe the tool bar on mobile.
I have to say that I myself think it's a real fiddly job to do anything more than plain text on a smartphone. I know the Quill Composer exists but I really don't want to risk ending up with 13k posts in the original markup format.
Going back to the link example, it should be clear and unambiguous to everyone.
Here's an example from Woltlab how to insert a link on mobile, you really can't do anything wrong (and I hate Woltlab so much but damn, anyone can use this editor):
Sorry for off-topic, it just came to my mind and I really share @julian's love for markup
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@julian said in Mobile Composer | Placement of Menus > Bottom:
Isn't the woltlab guy working on Flarum now?
I don't know. I thought it's a whole company.
A little helper window for link addition would be a good improvement I think.
Helper windows would be a great improvement in usability in my opinion.
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@julian Modals!?
Modal visual note. Not exactly a design but using a modal makes features more visible and you can include even more informative feature clarifying text. I don't think any mobile composer out there uses modals, well not that I've encountered. Nice UI things could happen here to.
If we have a trigger to pop up a modal we can avoid the keyboard shift, or can we... I can't remember, but nothing will move other than a modal appearing right?
- Select text
- click format
- format option menu modal pops up
- select button-option
- commit
- back to main view.
But to select text you are in the keyboard shift up view, at least in iOS as is.
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@julian said in Mobile Composer | Placement of Menus > Bottom:
NodeBB is not notified when a viewport resizes due to keyboard opening/closing.
Is that a mobile OS thing or is NodeBB not set to watch for it?
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@dave1904 Not off topic at all, some excellent insights, very important ones again and with the absolute wedge of users on mobile, and mobile being hardest and most difficult to post and engage in deeper and meaningful ways is it any wonder that engagement has dropped off so much over the years.
The death of long format posts for the sake of a million identical one liners or emoji reactions.
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O omega referenced this topic on
