[3.0] My Thoughts on Features for SMF 2.1

Started by Matthew K., September 20, 2011, 06:56:32 PM

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Kindred

really? The dropdown menus work just fine on both my android and my iPad
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Украинi

Please do not PM, IM or Email me with support questions.  You will get better and faster responses in the support boards.  Thank you.

"Loki is not evil, although he is certainly not a force for good. Loki is... complicated."

Matthew K.

They work fine on my iPhone...
Quote from: Kindred on September 29, 2011, 07:27:47 PM
really? The dropdown menus work just fine on both my android and my iPad

Antechinus

How do you get them to work? The guys at my forum said they were useless on touch screen. You can get them to open by hovering over the link, but you can't actually use the sub-menus.

bloc

I don't have a smartphone - yet :P but if it works I assume the menu stays long enough for people to press the submenu?

Kindred

Actually, on touch screens, a single tap brings down the menu, the second touch selects the option.

Works just fine here and on facebook
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Украинi

Please do not PM, IM or Email me with support questions.  You will get better and faster responses in the support boards.  Thank you.

"Loki is not evil, although he is certainly not a force for good. Loki is... complicated."

bloc

Ah. :) so it will not disappear until you press the option..? or does it by a time-limit? If so, then theres no need to actually make the menu persistant, which I thought must be done for smartphones. The idea I am exploring is a sort of sliding down, stay, or sliding up again. Not so much dropdown as such.

Antechinus

How can it do that? Tapping the link in the main menu should take you to profile, admin or whatever. It can't do that and open the submenu.

Kindred

Well, the behavior for me is
1 tap opens the sub menu
A second tap triggers the normal effect of the heading or of the sub menu item
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Украинi

Please do not PM, IM or Email me with support questions.  You will get better and faster responses in the support boards.  Thank you.

"Loki is not evil, although he is certainly not a force for good. Loki is... complicated."

Matthew K.

Same here...although I think it responds as more of a "firm click" as the link, and more of a tap to the drop down. I don't really think about it when navigating, all I know is that it works just fine for me.

Antechinus

Weird. Maybe they have improved the touchscreen interface since my lot were grumbling. Offhand I can't think how they coded that one. Maybe it detects display:none or absolute/relative positioning on nested lists. Interesting.

Good stuff anyway. Nice to know drops with work without js on touchscreen.

bloc

Quote from: Labradoodle-360 on September 30, 2011, 05:59:34 PM
Same here...although I think it responds as more of a "firm click" as the link, and more of a tap to the drop down. I don't really think about it when navigating, all I know is that it works just fine for me.
*nods* I suspect its more behaviours on phones, for example sliding your finger makes it scroll. They prob. tailored these into logical patterns when seeing a regular webpage. So "tap" is the same as hovering, and "push" the same as click.

But is this the same over all phones? Or even in different browsers on the phones?

Antechinus

Quote from: Kindred on September 30, 2011, 05:57:07 PM
Well, the behavior for me is
1 tap opens the sub menu
A second tap triggers the normal effect of the heading or of the sub menu item
Come to think of it, what about the line height? With the default menus the links are stacked very close together. Far closer than is recommended for easy use with fingers.

bloc

Use your nails. :) Really, thats what I tried when I was testing a friends phone some time ago.

But again, it might be that the "hit area" is increased when its very tight.

Bottom line: I think the documented advice on how links etc. for touch screens are to be constructed, should be followed, and not using any hacks to make it better. The medium knows best what it can do, the webpage should only adhere to what it absolutely must require from that. Physical things, like width, would be important.

Antechinus

Well yes that's fine if you have nails long enough, but what if you're a tradesman with big fingers and very short nails?

Agree about no "hacks", although it would still seem sensible to use recommended finger-proof link sizing when constructing smartphone themes. IIRC they usually say everything should be at least 44px by 44px to be safe..

Matthew K.

It is tough to pick which menu item you want to click, I often click the wrong one without zooming in.

Antechinus

D'oh. I forgot about zoom. That's an obvious workaround but it would be a nuisance.

Matthew K.

Okay, I'm out of the house and when checking this topic I decided to actually test it on my iPhone.

Results:
- Clicking a menu with no children will result in going to that link immediately
- Clicking a menu with children will not take you to the parents URL.
- To go to a link, when the item has children you have to double-click the parent element.
- Tapping / Click makes no difference to the result.

Antechinus

Ah. Interesting. I'm still curious about what they are using for detection though. 

HecKel

Hey!

I didn't read the whole topic, sorry if I miss something that was already discussed..., but I'd like to share my feedback with you all as well.

Quote from: Labradoodle-360 on September 20, 2011, 06:56:32 PM
Database Support:
In my opinion, SMF should just support MySQL, or have the option to select their database type on the installation.

I think this is not that relevant, I don't how is the percentage of forums not using MySQL, however certainly the bigger part of the "cake" uses MySQL. If SMF could be adapted to a object-oriented scheme, this would be much easier to handle and other SGDBs could be supported in different packages.

Quote from: Labradoodle-360 on September 20, 2011, 06:56:32 PM
Calendar:
I believe the Calendar should not be a core-feature. I think it should be removed from the SMF Core, and completely re-written to have an AJAX/jQuery fancy interface, provided as an official addon/modification.

As calendar, I also would like to recommend the same to other functionalities. I believe SMF collects information how forum's owners use its functionalities, the less used could be made available as official modifications.

Quote from: Labradoodle-360 on September 20, 2011, 06:56:32 PM
$smcFunc & PDO:
$smcFunc should be re-written as a PHP Object for easier usage, and a much shorter line-count to accomplish a much better result. Plus some more automation such as auto-data type with the ability to over-ride? For instance, with $smcFunc in 2.0, you have to declare each columns data type, such as 'field' => 'int', and so forth, but this can be figured out with PHP very easily, with no need to declare each column.

Along with the PHP Object, PDO should be implemented for data sanitation.

100% agree with this one.

Another thing that I would like to see implemented is a modular MOD structure, something alike WordPress. MOD incompatibility can become a pain in the ass to those that don't know anything about coding, I believe this would be a great improvement for SMF.

My 2cents.

PS: Sorry about my english, but I am barely awake now...
Quote from: Eliana Tamerin on August 23, 2008, 04:10:10 PM
SMF 7 is where it gets good. That has time travel. You can go back and post before the guy who flamed you. :P

Xarcell

Quote from: Kindred on September 22, 2011, 07:10:44 AM
Recaptcha is useless now. It was broken by the spambots several months ago.

damnit, where' sthe like button. Oh well, +1

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