I'm in a mobile workshop at work, and thinking about simplifying thing for mobile users. If all users are not mobile users already, then they will be pretty soon. If anyone is reading this page at all (unlikely) then there's a good chance they'll be reading this on a mobile device. I've done some work a while back to make this page display better on a mobile device (try it out, or just shrink your browser down really small) but now I've done a bit more work on getting rid of as many of the user inputs as possible, to make it quicker and easier to post something.
So post something, please! See that reply button? That's for you!
I've been wedded for a long time to the idea that a message board post should have a subject line and then the body of the message. This is just a ridiculously dated concept based on the very first forum code I was involved in. It's only taken me twenty years to get rid of it! Now there's no subject box to the message, just this text box for you to type into. If it looks like you typed a subject and hit return then it'll use that. If you didn't it'll try and take the first part of your message. Also if your message ends with
tag: forum, message board, code, usability, mobile
then I'll take those and make them "tags" too. Tags used to be a separate input box on the form.
This is just the beginning, next step might be voice input. Not really for you, but more for me, so I can grab my phone and blog on the go more easily. Probably before voice input I'll do a bit more "parsing" of the message, try and work out if I'm talking about a place or an event and then link the post automatically to the page for that post or that event (right now these are separate entry boxes too).
Well, it's interesting to me anyway.
Paul Clarke's blog - I live in Hythe in Kent. Wed + dad to two, I'm a full-stack web engineer, + I do js / Node, some ruby, other languages etc. I like pubbing, parkrun, eating, home automation and other diy jiggery-pokery, history, genealogy, Television, squirrels, pirates, lego, and TIME TRAVEL.