11
votes
Can we make the new "Back to top" link optional?
I just noticed we got a back to top link, floating on the bottom right. It is easy to block on desktop, but on mobile, not as easy. I think it'd be great it we had an option to disable it in user settings.
Well, that'll teach me to try doing something kinda fancy (using the not-fully-supported "Intersection Observer API") and not announce the change.
It's reverted now, sorry about that.
No problem! Thank you for the quick fix!
Just to provide a different point of view: I saw this new feature and liked it. And the way it was implemented wasn't a problem for me. It sat in the corner of my mobile screen, and behaved itself nicely.
While I never saw it, I agree with you, it wounds like a cool feature. But I can see how it could be in the way/intrusive on some people's mobile.
Ahh! So that's why I haven't been able to vote or comment all day. Hope it gets fixed soon, think of the Safari users! There are at least one of us!
Besides it breaking all the JS (thank you for the quick turnaround on that bug I reported!), I don’t find this kind of feature useful on iOS because I can just tap the top of my screen to navigate to the top. This is a core iOS feature and reimplementing it on a site is a poor idea.
The UI and UX are always going to be different, they’re not going to act the same way as the built in tool. Particularly on iOS where the emphasis is on consistent experiences, having something different decreases the quality of experience. Being able to toggle it is thus very valuable IMO.
Coming from an HCI perspective it would be good to hear from any users using screen readers or alternative interaction tools before it's removed completely (though a toggle obviously fine, and a different implementation that has fallback to older js methods would appear to be needed).
It's kind of strange, it's disabled for me when browsing normally, but I do see it (and it's working) when I am writing a comment.
It also blocks my comment box.
I'm not seeing it, neither in mobile Firefox nor Safari on iOS. But, I also can't vote or reply on mobile right now, in either browser. Not sure if changes were rolled out, but it's broken for me at the moment. Everything seems normal on desktop Firefox.
Edit: Hell, I can't even log in on mobile right now. Restarted phone, cleared browser from memory, etc. Nothing seems to work right now. Tried three browsers (Safari, FF, FF Focus) That's why I can't vote or comment, but the site's never logged me off like that before, so I didn't notice it.
I had the same problem yesterday. Couldn’t vote or even open the sidebar on mobile Firefox or Safari, probably a javascript error. Didn’t matter if I was logged in or not. Today it’s back to normal.
Odd, I'm not seeing it yet. Back to top links always feel very redundant to me though. It's not particularly difficult to scroll in a browser, and each website having a different implementation means it's not reliable enough for muscle memory.
I find I'd actually appreciate if my browser had the functionality to do it in its menu, similar to how the
Homekey behaves on desktop. But I really dislike things floating on the page, I always tap them accidentally, and they partially cover the viewport in a very unpleasant manner. Also, this link covers thePost commentbutton, on my phone at least, when the keyboard is activated, so if we make it optional, maybe it's better to relocate it to a different corner.Does Android not have a "tap the top of the screen to navigate to the top of the document" feature like iOS does? It's been so long since I've used Android that I can't remember. I imagine it might be patented, which would explain things.
You've given another reason why I dislike that kind of feature, that it obstructs parts of the page on a display that's already cramped.
A Samsung phone I had had a similar feature where if you patted the top of the phone twice it scrolled up top. But it did not work everwhere, IIRC.
Secondary jump buttons on opposite sides of the regular scroll buttons could work. Jump to top, jump to bottom.
I feel like I don't actually need to jump all that often, though. Accidental misclicks might be an issue here too.
I also don't find it useful--and find it somewhat distracting, blocking the end of the bottom line or two of text and thus effectively shortening my screen. Much more useful would be a bar featuring the comment author's name, a link to vote on the comment, or a link to scroll back to the parent comment.
I'll be the contrarian and say that I think a floating back-to-the-top button sounds like a useful feature, especially on mobile. But sure, make it optional, as apparently many want to be able to disable it.
I'm not seeing it either, even after multiple reloads.
It's been reverted, and was only active on mobile (I didn't know that when posting, sorry).
I don't have it on my desktop view, and I don't use Tildes on mobile. Mainly because I don't interact with my browser often.