Is it me,or Safari,or are iPads really a nightmare to use on forums?

[timb]

I can't stand writing posts via Safari on this forum. For whatever reason (a combination of the JavaScript being served and all the animated emoticon GIFs I suspect) there is a huge lag between what you type actually showing up (close to 1 second) which is very distracting, since I can type 30WPM (or more) on the iPad touch keyboard, without even looking at the keys.

Anyway, point being the forum software Dave uses doesn't have great mobile optimization. I'd recommend you instead take a look at Tapatalk, which is an App that lets you browse a large number of forums. You can follow threads, get push notifications, reply to posts, upload images, etc.

It's all I use to participate in forums anymore (since all the forums I visit support it). It's very nice having everything in one place!

Tapatalk is available in the App Store if you want to give it a try.

[Mr. Scram]

No. I did not confirm that. There are substantial range of contents that can be created on a mobile device.

Some decades ago you needed big video cameras and room-sized installations to produce a television program.
Today all that is needed is a small handheld video camera and som editing software on a small mobile computer.
The trend is clear.

But you did. You said that not every household needs a lathe and a stationary phone. Not everyone is a content creator and therefore can make do with content consuming tools. Again, content can be created on mobile devices. But if we look at the world around us, so very little of it is created that way.

[glarsson]

But you did. You said that not every household needs a lathe and a stationary phone.

You can create stuff/content without a lathe and you can make telephone calls without a stationary phone.
There is no need for a "traditional" computer to create contents and many companies, e.g. Adobe, agrees as they have released iPad versions of their contents creating software.

[Mr. Scram]

You can create stuff/content without a lathe and you can make telephone calls without a stationary phone.
There is no need for a "traditional" computer to create contents and many companies, e.g. Adobe, agrees as they have released iPad versions of their contents creating software.

Exactly. The iPad version is hardly popular, because it is perceived as a watered down version of the real deal. You can, but most people that are interested in those kinds of things won't.

[vk6zgo]

With Windows, replies on this forum are quite easy,even editing within the reply box, but other forums (fora?) I frequent, such as "Whirlpool", "The Roar" (sports site), & a few others are not.

With these, I sometimes resort to "cutting & pasting" the whole posting to Word, Word Pad, or whatever, doing my editing there, then "cutting & pasting" it back.

This works pretty well with the iPad too, -------at least Notes  has a reasonably big page to work with.

Hey! I just mastered the "Magnifying Glass" thing------- not too easy with arthritic fingers, though! 

[alm]

Exactly. The iPad version is hardly popular, because it is perceived as a watered down version of the real deal. You can, but most people that are interested in those kinds of things won't.

I looked at the iPad version of Lightroom a while ago for a friend. Looked like an absolute toy compared to the PC* version. No local editing at all. Basically an entry-level tool with some integration with Adobe's online platform. Definitely positioned to use in addition to a PC version to do some quick sorting and tagging on the road, not a replacement. The same is true, to a slightly lesser extent, for Photoshop. The mobile tools mostly exist to help them sell their online platform (which you need to easily communicate with the full version of the tools on a PC). So I would argue the problem is not perception, but the actual quality.

* I mean PC as in a personal computer that might run any OS, not an IBM product from 1981.

[Mr. Scram]

Exactly. The iPad version is hardly popular, because it is perceived as a watered down version of the real deal. You can, but most people that are interested in those kinds of things won't.

I looked at the iPad version of Lightroom a while ago for a friend. Looked like an absolute toy compared to the PC* version. No local editing at all. Basically an entry-level tool with some integration with Adobe's online platform. Definitely positioned to use in addition to a PC version to do some quick sorting and tagging on the road, not a replacement. The same is true, to a slightly lesser extent, for Photoshop. The mobile tools mostly exist to help them sell their online platform (which you need to easily communicate with the full version of the tools on a PC). So I would argue the problem is not perception, but the actual quality.

Yes, I meant to indicate actual quality too. Maybe my phrasing wasn't ideal. The perception is a result of the product being what it is.

It is surprising, or maybe not surprising at all, that some tools that do not try to imitate a desktop program easily win the competition. Leonardo is an amazing tool for any artist that uses a pen and a tablet that does an excellent job leveraging the unique qualities of a touch screen tablet form factor with a pen while also taking advantage of the power of fully equipped pc hardware.

[IanB]

I have tried using my iPad to make forum posts, but it is definitely painful compared to a proper computer. I find a Bluetooth keyboard helps enormously, but the lack of a mouse is still a killer. Stabbing the screen with a finger is absolutely not equivalent to the precision you get with a mouse.

I think it ironic that iOS could easily provide Bluetooth mouse support and accurate text editing, but I have to assume Apple does not want to do this as it would cannibalize laptop sales.

[Dubbie]

A lot of people don't know that if your iOS device supports force touch, you can force touch the keyboard and it turns into a trackpad. Very handy for text selections.

[tooki]

A lot of people don't know that if your iOS device supports force touch, you can force touch the keyboard and it turns into a trackpad. Very handy for text selections.

On iPhone only. On iPad, use two fingers on the keyboard to do the same.

I think it ironic that iOS could easily provide Bluetooth mouse support and accurate text editing, but I have to assume Apple does not want to do this as it would cannibalize laptop sales.

Apple has always been extremely adamant about the fact that they allow their products to cannibalize each other, because that's better than allowing a competitor to move in instead. We just now saw the full effect of this: about a week ago, the last iPod models were discontinued (other than the iPod touch, which is really just an iPhone without cellular), having been fully cannibalized by smartphones.

[vk6zgo]

A lot of people don't know that if your iOS device supports force touch, you can force touch the keyboard and it turns into a trackpad. Very handy for text selections.

On iPhone only. On iPad, use two fingers on the keyboard to do the same.

I tried that.
It doesn't seem to work on my wife's one (earlier model or software?).

I'm using a desktop PC at the moment--------the ease of use is stunning after the iPad!

[IanB]

On iPhone only. On iPad, use two fingers on the keyboard to do the same.

OK, I didn't know about that. Just tried it and it does seem to work.

Text editing is still a bit annoying with the iOS bugs, but it does make things better.

[NiHaoMike]

Bluetooth keyboards are not that expensive nowadays.

[tooki]

On iPhone only. On iPad, use two fingers on the keyboard to do the same.

OK, I didn't know about that. Just tried it and it does seem to work.

Text editing is still a bit annoying with the iOS bugs, but it does make things better.

It sure is. But again, given that on some websites, it works totally fine, I'm not sure how much of the blame falls on iOS bugs and how much falls on website programmers.

A lot of people don't know that if your iOS device supports force touch, you can force touch the keyboard and it turns into a trackpad. Very handy for text selections.

On iPhone only. On iPad, use two fingers on the keyboard to do the same.

I tried that.
It doesn't seem to work on my wife's one (earlier model or software?).

I'm using a desktop PC at the moment--------the ease of use is stunning after the iPad!

Are you using a third party keyboard by chance? That would explain both the lack of two-finger support, and the wildly buggy text editing. It just dawned on me that the problems you describe are the same ones I had back when I was using SwiftKey, which I eventually abandoned because it was so damned buggy in so many apps. (For example, in Facebook apps, SwiftKey couldn't deal with when you tagged a name in a text, and would mangle the shit out of it.)

[vk6zgo]

Nope!

Totally original iPad
No third party stuff of any kind.

[Cubdriver]

I definitely find text selection and editing on the iPad to be a royal bitch.  Touch screens in general don't seem to like my fingers, and trying to edit text often gets me to the point of wanting to fling it across the room like a frisbee.    

Extra points for when I type up a bunch of stuff, venture momentarily to another window to look something up, then go back and it refreshes the page and flushes everything in the reply box.   

-Pat

[tooki]

I definitely find text selection and editing on the iPad to be a royal bitch.  Touch screens in general don't seem to like my fingers, and trying to edit text often gets me to the point of wanting to fling it across the room like a frisbee.    

Extra points for when I type up a bunch of stuff, venture momentarily to another window to look something up, then go back and it refreshes the page and flushes everything in the reply box.   

-Pat

FWIW, that's the iPad purging background processes from memory when memory is short. Generally less of a problem on newer models that have more RAM.

(And yes, absolutely maddening when you've been working on a post...)

[Cubdriver]

I definitely find text selection and editing on the iPad to be a royal bitch.  Touch screens in general don't seem to like my fingers, and trying to edit text often gets me to the point of wanting to fling it across the room like a frisbee.    

Extra points for when I type up a bunch of stuff, venture momentarily to another window to look something up, then go back and it refreshes the page and flushes everything in the reply box.   

-Pat

FWIW, that's the iPad purging background processes from memory when memory is short. Generally less of a problem on newer models that have more RAM.

(And yes, absolutely maddening when you've been working on a post...)

Ahhh...  Nice to know.  Thank you.  That helps to explain why it seems to happen without any rhyme nor reason.  I may go days or weeks without any issue, then other times it seems to happen frequently.  I suppose I should reboot it more often to flush everything out.

-Pat

[tooki]

I definitely find text selection and editing on the iPad to be a royal bitch.  Touch screens in general don't seem to like my fingers, and trying to edit text often gets me to the point of wanting to fling it across the room like a frisbee.    

Extra points for when I type up a bunch of stuff, venture momentarily to another window to look something up, then go back and it refreshes the page and flushes everything in the reply box.   

-Pat

FWIW, that's the iPad purging background processes from memory when memory is short. Generally less of a problem on newer models that have more RAM.

(And yes, absolutely maddening when you've been working on a post...)

Ahhh...  Nice to know.  Thank you.  That helps to explain why it seems to happen without any rhyme nor reason.  I may go days or weeks without any issue, then other times it seems to happen frequently.  I suppose I should reboot it more often to flush everything out.

-Pat

Not really!

iOS memory and CPU management is really good; every effort to manually clean up just results in lower battery life and performance as you purge things from RAM that needn't be, necessitating them reloading from scratch unnecessarily . (DO NOT go and clear out the application switcher; you serve only to undermine yourself.)

What you are probably noticing is background memory use by background tasks, like automatic updates, syncing, etc.

[tooki]

My wife has an iPad which she seldom uses, as she finds it doesn't work well with her Facebook games.
As my laptop is faulty at the moment, I borrowed it.

Everything seems difficult to do, but especially, answering postings on this, & other forums.

Things which are simple with Windows on a PC are incredibly arduous.
For instance, quoting just part of a posting, & deleting the rest.

The thing will only delete backwards, so you have to start at the end, & work back.
 
Sometimes it sort of works, then you find that somewhere along the line, you have Inadvertently imbedded or something along those lines in your text (or it scatters random words throughout).

The "keyboard" can't do square brackets, either, so if  you accidentally delete one of those, you need to go hunting for one you can steal from somewhere else in the original posting.

Another fun thing is that, when you tap the touchscreen, sometimes you get no result whatever, & need to do it several (or six) times.

Aaarrrrggggh!!!


Sent from my wife's iPad, using "hunt, peck, n' grind teeth".

It's forum software's theme's JavaScript and whatnot. I run into the occasional weird issue here that I don't on other forums. (And some websites are far worse... instagram and Tumblr, I'm talking to you!) In the end, it boils down to the webmaster of a site not having performed enough testing on mobile, resulting in scripts that bog down a mobile CPU and cause weird behavior. Or scripts that aren't designed to work with touch inputs.

On the eevblog forums, the thing that acts up on iPad for me is selecting text in the compose screen: it will often just lose its place. Oddly, zooming in on the large text field helps a lot. (If you see the selection handles being drawn weird at normal size, zoom until they look right; then it should also behave right.) Also, you must first tap once to enter (put focus in) the text field BEFORE you attempt to select text within it.

Just a followup: Since you mentioned it originally, I've really been noticing performance problems here on the forums on iPad, resulting in the keyboard not registering many taps, registering spurious ones, and the autocorrect engine falling behind and failing to work (basically, it just stalls for seconds at a time), resulting in mangled input. It works fine in other apps. I wonder if there was a recent change to the forum theme that's done something, or if a new Safari or WebKit bug in a recent iOS update is to blame? It used to work fine.

[timb]

My wife has an iPad which she seldom uses, as she finds it doesn't work well with her Facebook games.
As my laptop is faulty at the moment, I borrowed it.

Everything seems difficult to do, but especially, answering postings on this, & other forums.

Things which are simple with Windows on a PC are incredibly arduous.
For instance, quoting just part of a posting, & deleting the rest.

The thing will only delete backwards, so you have to start at the end, & work back.
 
Sometimes it sort of works, then you find that somewhere along the line, you have Inadvertently imbedded or something along those lines in your text (or it scatters random words throughout).

The "keyboard" can't do square brackets, either, so if  you accidentally delete one of those, you need to go hunting for one you can steal from somewhere else in the original posting.

Another fun thing is that, when you tap the touchscreen, sometimes you get no result whatever, & need to do it several (or six) times.

Aaarrrrggggh!!!


Sent from my wife's iPad, using "hunt, peck, n' grind teeth".

It's forum software's theme's JavaScript and whatnot. I run into the occasional weird issue here that I don't on other forums. (And some websites are far worse... instagram and Tumblr, I'm talking to you!) In the end, it boils down to the webmaster of a site not having performed enough testing on mobile, resulting in scripts that bog down a mobile CPU and cause weird behavior. Or scripts that aren't designed to work with touch inputs.

On the eevblog forums, the thing that acts up on iPad for me is selecting text in the compose screen: it will often just lose its place. Oddly, zooming in on the large text field helps a lot. (If you see the selection handles being drawn weird at normal size, zoom until they look right; then it should also behave right.) Also, you must first tap once to enter (put focus in) the text field BEFORE you attempt to select text within it.

Just a followup: Since you mentioned it originally, I've really been noticing performance problems here on the forums on iPad, resulting in the keyboard not registering many taps, registering spurious ones, and the autocorrect engine falling behind and failing to work (basically, it just stalls for seconds at a time), resulting in mangled input. It works fine in other apps. I wonder if there was a recent change to the forum theme that's done something, or if a new Safari or WebKit bug in a recent iOS update is to blame? It used to work fine.

It's always been a bitch for me. Honestly, I think it's all the animated GIF smileys that appear in the edit window. Safari has *always* had poor handling of animated GIFs (it's gotten a tad better recently, but still not as good as other browsers; I remember when a page of animated GIFs would peg a quad core CPU at 400%).

Seriously, you guys should try Tapatalk. It solves everything.

[tooki]

I have tried it. Couldn't stand it. I hate having a different UI from the real website.

[timb]

I have tried it. Couldn't stand it. I hate having a different UI from the real website.

Personally, given the option between a desktop webpage, mobile optimized webpage or a native tablet app, I'd take the native app every day. (Especially when, like in the case of Tapatalk, you get *more* features compared to the webpage alone.)

Personally, I think most forum UIs are atrocious and stuck in the early-2000's, design wise. (Though some forums do have nice UIs; I'm particularly fond of the Something Awful Forum's User Control Panel; being able to follow threads, track replies, manage PMs, view unread posts, etc. all from a single page is *very* handy and one of the reasons I like Tapatalk, as it provides similar functionality).

I browse 4 or 5 forums regularly, using wildly different themes and forum engines. Having all those forums in one place, with a single UI makes it less jarring when switching between them.

Plus unified reply, activity and PM notifications makes keeping up with threads and users incredibly easy.

To each their own though. If the webpage works for you, more power to you!

[ivaylo]

It's you. No problem whatsoever posting on this forum (emoticons, pictures and everything) from an iPad. Like others said, most content on the web nowadays is created on mobile devices. "But I can't use AutoCAD" - forums aren't AutoCAD... Seen a millenial type on their phone, BTW?

[SL4P]

Across the board, i avoid Safari on the pad and phone (Chrome)
To the poster that suggested Tapatalk... to each his own.  Never again for me, I tried it and was totally unimpressed.