MW on Mobile Phones

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redrun
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Post by redrun »

Hello,
Posting to see if there's any way I can help, even if only by raising discussion.

I've seen a few folks saying that they can't make changes to the MW because they're on mobile, and while I'm able to finagle it into working for me, I'm seeing some issues there myself that we might be able to improve. So I suppose my questions are, is there interest in applying some tweaks here, and if so, is there someone for whom that would be easy, or shall I see what I can find out myself?

First is the font sizing. This isn't too bad on my phone, but I can certainly see it being an issue, and it seems technologically simplest to fix. It's probably fairly easy for a web pro (do we have one of those still around?), but I at least know where to begin, and tutorials and examples abound.
Ideally, I'd test and submit some proposed (and probably minor) changes to whomever could make them on the server side, we'd ask some additional folks to test it out on a dummy page, and when satisfied, it would go live for everyone.

The part that gave me the most trouble was the navigation menu up top (Projects, People, Stats, Links).
If I tap one of those, I see its drop-down menu flash onto the screen for a moment, but then it's gone again, so I can't get to the "My Sections" page from there.
I've worked around this by making browser bookmarks to each of those links that I've needed (for example, '/stats/sections' for the "My Sections" view), but hopefully we can fix it for everyone.
It seems like it'll involve more than a little CSS, since the menu is scripted. A quick search around the web gives a couple different leads, so it could either be a very simple fix, or a wider decision that comes with some trade-offs. I'd have to do some additional digging to find out which.

That's all the issues I've seen with the parts I use as a PL. Are there additional issues on mobile that we could take a look at, at the same time?
Rapunzelina
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Post by Rapunzelina »

I'm not responding as an admin or a techie, as I have no idea if any such changes are possible at the moment, but as a user, I'd love to be able to use that menu up top!

I don't mind the small font. I prefer zooming in as needed.

Another thing that can't be done on phones currently is re-ordering the sections. Like when you add a new section, which is added at the bottom, then you can drag and drop it where you want it using the mouse. So I don't know if that is at all possible on a phone.

I can't think of any other changes that can't be done on a phone, so I don't know what people refer to when they say that. Maybe there are ways they haven't discovered yet or maybe it depends on the phone they're using. Or maybe they don't want to work on a small screen to avoid mistakes. Nothing we can do about that :mrgreen:
redrun
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Post by redrun »

Hmm, yes, I see a note about dragging to re-order having a technical conflict with scrolling on mobile... that seems to be the only way of moving them now, but that doesn't mean it has to be.

Making the section number editable, just like the comments section is, seems like the simplest way from a user perspective. There is also a "Meta" column with a magnifying glass icon, which opens a metadata editor at the top of the page. That would be less convenient (and is also currently not editable), but would it make sense from a user perspective, to edit the section number up there?
TriciaG
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Post by TriciaG »

It seems like it'll involve more than a little CSS, since the menu is scripted. A quick search around the web gives a couple different leads, so it could either be a very simple fix, or a wider decision that comes with some trade-offs. I'd have to do some additional digging to find out which.
Speaking as the spouse of the person who has probably made the most changes to the site in the past 2 years or so (aside from the sysadmin), NOTHING is easy to change in the programming. He's called the code "a flaming pile of ****". (No disrespect to the developer we paid to develop it...) :lol: And since he has a full time job, he only works on the code during prolonged times off - that is to say, Christmas/New Year's, and that's about it.

He's probably the person most familiar with the code to do something like this, but it's been 10 months since he worked on it last, and there are higher priority items to fix before addressing something like this. And since he's strictly volunteer, I try to let him work on stuff he prefers to work on rather than stuff that frustrates him that much more. :P

If you're at all interested, the code and a whole list of issues is available at Github: https://github.com/LibriVox/librivox-catalog You could snoop around a bit if you like.
redrun
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Post by redrun »

Yes, I'll check it out, thanks! I can work up some proposed changes, though I see there are already a few of those waiting for testing and approval.
I can totally understand working on the things you want to work on as a volunteer, and since everything seems to be working right now, it also makes sense to err on the side of caution before approving even small changes.
mightyfelix
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Post by mightyfelix »

redrun wrote: October 7th, 2022, 7:43 am Hmm, yes, I see a note about dragging to re-order having a technical conflict with scrolling on mobile... that seems to be the only way of moving them now, but that doesn't mean it has to be.

Making the section number editable, just like the comments section is, seems like the simplest way from a user perspective. There is also a "Meta" column with a magnifying glass icon, which opens a metadata editor at the top of the page. That would be less convenient (and is also currently not editable), but would it make sense from a user perspective, to edit the section number up there?
I actually love this idea of making the section number editable, instead of drag-and-drop. Drag-and-drop is pretty great, except on a touch screen, or if you have a gazillion sections. DRs in particular tend to have LOTS of sections, and those sections frequently do need to be reordered. So sometimes I will have to drag a section through a hundred other sections to get it where I need it, and I do find it tedious in that case.

No idea how feasible that is, or if it would drive Tricia's spouse crazy, but I do like the idea.
redrun
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Post by redrun »

Well, one thing I've learned from listening to programmers talk: one should never promise something until it's already done. :lol:

That said, I've taken the first steps in setting up a copy of LV to test changes on. The hope is that I'll have something tested and smooth enough to be an easy approval, by the time someone's available to do so.

Making the section number editable in the list will be the first thing I try.
TriciaG wrote: October 7th, 2022, 8:10 am He's probably the person most familiar with the code to do something like this, but it's been 10 months since he worked on it last, and there are higher priority items to fix before addressing something like this.
I should ask, since I've made it this far: do we know which things those might be? With more time but less knowledge, I can take a stab or three and perhaps save him a little work later.
TriciaG
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Post by TriciaG »

I'm not saying they're the easiest, just the highest priority. :)

In the various issue descriptions in Github, I had put a priority ranking of 1-5 (based on my own opinion). I don't suppose there's a way to search and sort them.
redrun
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Post by redrun »

Fair enough! I'll see what we have to work with, and if there's anything I can even attempt to fix, I may just do that.

I know many projects use a priority tag, which can be easily filtered in search. This project has a few tags like 'good first issue', but none for priorities yet. Needs a project admin to set up the tags, I think.

I'm assuming 1 is the highest priority, so this would be one of those that should be going first?
https://github.com/LibriVox/librivox-catalog/issues/24
TriciaG
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Post by TriciaG »

Right.

For that one, I do know that the entire author database loads into the browser, which can really slow it down. But it's kinda necessary to do it that way in order to quickly sort and search and such. So while it may be very high priority, it won't be easy!
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