Complaints about the editor on mobile devices

[CKummer]

Hey everybody, 

I would like to know if I am the only one receives a lot of complaints about the usability of the editor an mobile devices. What's up in your communities?

Regards

Christoph

[SohilM]

@CKummer I am from Khoros Communities Product team. Can you please share the issues your community members are facing? 

[TeroRe]

Yes, definitely. Biggest issue is the quote feature.

I dont know Khoros strategy about the quote feature itself (what happens to the quote in the future?). Here in Atlas they dont have quote anymore and I wonder why dont?

We use quote a lot, to point the comment we are replying to. Especially with long and threads it is difficult to follow who is replying and to who. Threading isn't the option because it is difficult to follow discussion, latest comments should be first or last in the thread, not in the middle and "somewhere" (just like Facebook and it is annoying to follow the discussion).

What is the problem with the quotes?

• There isn't the multi quote
• If you are replying to long comment and there is bunch of not_so_important_text and you want to remove everything else than the important part, <blockquote> </blockquote> html tags breaks and your comment is just one big mess. Soooo annoying

Yeah, these issues exist also in the desktop. Please vote my idea, look my signature.

Second thing is especially mobile issue - message editor is so low that you can see only 3-4 lines at once. So it means you have to scroll up scroll down all the time, to see what you have already written. Soooo annoying. 

This is problem especially in Android devices. I am glad they have fixed it here in Atlas, but out of the box text editor has this issue.

Third issue is that you dont have same features in mobile and desktop. 

[MarkAtTruth]

@TeroRe 

Good to know about this. I'll be watching for feedback as our community launches. I use my phone a lot while I am out and about and may answer things on mobile. I tend to use quote so people know who I am responding to.  Even if content is threaded people don't always look at who I'm responding to so having the quote function on mobile make it more apparent is important.  

Also being able to break apart a quote and respond to things individually is important too. 

And multiquote too.  Both quoting multiple people in one reply and also quoting one person multiple times in one reply rather than rapid posting replies would be helpful too.  People who have a mobile device as a primary source of the internet access don't want to receive multiple email notifications because the person responded multiple times to catch up since they last time they logged in.  XDA Developers Community had this implemented really well 5+ years back. 

[JasonHill]

@SohilM 

We get most complaints from iPad users. The problem seems to be when composing a post it's very difficult/sometimes impossible to move the cursor around. The focus is sometimes incorrect - the cursor is sometimes hidden behind the on-screen keyboard. 

Our mobile users tend to have the most trouble trying to get text and images to look how they want them to. They would love the ability to be able to drag and place images where they want them in a post. 

Jason

[MarkAtTruth]

@CKummer Maybe update your subject to be "Complaints about the editor on mobile devices". You  might get more people to comment.

[TeroRe]

I know Khoros has "new gen UX" project where they are renewing the editor as well. But it might take, not following months. 

[SohilM]

@TeroRe Thanks for the info. Please see my comments below: 

1. Multi-Quote: Thank you. We will look into introducing ability to multi-quote. Currently, you can add "Blockquote" option in the toolbar that allows you to quote the text you want. Support will be able to add that for your community. 
2. Mobile editor height: We will increase the editor height to show more lines OOTB as well. In the meantime, reach out to Support to increase the height to accommodate more lines on mobile. They will be able to help you. 
3. Toolbar options on mobile: Please reach out to Support to add toolbar options on mobile to make it similar to Desktop. Also, Can you please share what are the options you would like to see on mobile that are on Desktop? 

@JasonHill 

1. I will check the behavior on ipad. Just to add, the text automatically scrolls up while you are typing on mobile and the keyboard is always below the text area. So, on mobile you will not face the issue.  
2. Drag images to reposition in RTE: Thank you for the suggestion. We will evaluate this. 

[waldemarhelm]

@TeroReWe had / have similar issues in our community. We adjusted the size of the editor text field some time ago. We have also changed the toolbar so that we now have (almost) all options on mobile.
But there is still a lack of e.g. adding videos.
The fact that you constantly have to scroll up and down, e.g. to highlight a text in bold or to add a list, is quite annoying. At least standard options such as bold, italic, list should be offered directly as a tooltip when selecting a text, as Apple does it.
Quoting on mobile devices is no fun at all.
I would like the editor to support e.g. Mark Down syntax (or at least something similar). Not only for mobile use, but also for desktop. Especially for mobile devices and super users it would be a huge improvement if you could just write

: quote: This is where the quote comes in :/quote:

or

> My quote.

Or for lists
* Entry 1
* Entry 2
* Entry 3

etc. I totally miss that.

What bothers me about the missing features is e.g. the missing Document Viewer. This means that attachments on mobile devices are constantly being downloaded instead of being displayed directly on the page. What I do not understand: The Document Viewer is responsive and would work mobile without restrictions like on the desktop, but is still not offered on mobile devices.
There are also various bugs in the editor.

We spoke extensively on these topics with @SohilM  and his colleagues in a Zoom meeting last year. Now with 21.1. some of the bugs that annoyed our users will probably be fixed. But unfortunately still no solution for inserting video or the document viewer. 😞

SohilM had announced that they had planned a few improvements to the basic usability of the editor for this year. I'm looking forward to it and hope that the improvements will meet our users' expectations. 🙂

@SohilM If you plan a beta, we are interested. 😉

[MarkAtTruth]

@CKummer you didn't mean to set this as the answer did you?

Nevermind, why did @JamilaR set it as accepted solution?  It's not a solution

[TeroRe]

Thanks @SohilM

I and we dont want to quote just some text, we want to quote the comment we are answering to. And this is how our quote works. The problem is how easy (read=difficult) it is to edit the quote. It breaks after you edit it.

Also problem is that you dont have multi quote - possibility to quote several comments at once. 

In a general level I am just wondering why Khoros doesnt use quotes anymore? You dont have quote not in desktop and not I mobile. I dont understand why.

About the editor height, our developer has already changed it. The point is why it has to be done by us/your support, it should be higher OOTB.

I know something about the "next level UX". I am really looking forward to see it in a action. 

[JamilaR]

Hi @MarkAtTruth, thanks for catching that it was a mistake. I updated it as not a solution. 

[SohilM]

@waldemarhelm Thanks for additional context. 

W.r.t, Video icon and document previewer, I sent you a private message. Please check. 

@TeroRe Yes, we will increase the height of the mobile editor as well OOTB. 

Khoros (Atlas) does have the quote option in the toolbar as shown below. Please expand the toolbar to see all the options.

@waldemarhelm @TeroRe Yes, we are working on a project to build a new completely simplified UX. We will reach out to you once we are ready to start beta. 

[TeroRe]

---

@SohilM wrote:

@TeroRe 

Khoros (Atlas) does have the quote option in the toolbar as shown below. Please expand the toolbar to see all the options.

---

Yes, I know. We have spoken about the mobile editor 🙂

---

@SohilM wrote:

@waldemarhelm @TeroRe Yes, we are working on a project to build a new completely simplified UX. We will reach out to you once we are ready to start beta. 

---

Yeah, sounds good 💪

--

By the way, this is one example how I want to reply. Point exactly what I am replying to. To get rid of the text what is irrelevant for my reply.

In desktop this kind of replying is difficult and annoying. In mobile this is impossible. It should be easy and intuitive no matter device you are using.

And then there is also the multi quote I speak all the time 🙂

[larsonreever]

is the markdown available in mobile or desktop yet. i see it was also requested by one of the commenters above too. I will submit an idea too

[tyw]

---

@larsonreever wrote:

is the markdown available in mobile or desktop yet. i see it was also requested by one of the commenters above too.

---

Markdown isn't supported in Community, or Care but lets change that.

Can I get your vote on these ideas? (cc @waldemarhelm) 

• Community - Markdown Support
• Care - Markdown support

[mtaylor26440]

Hi Christoph,

Yes, we have customer complaints on our mobile support app as well. Here's the latest from a customer. 

The threads and responses on the mobile-formatted site are squished to be narrow, making them harder to read.

Submit an idea to request Khoros to address it and I'll kudo's it. Thanks!

Mary

[MarkAtTruth]

@mtaylor26440 What's your reply vs what's the "customer" comment.

[karolinalinda]

Hi everyone,

I'm curious to learn how did you overcome responsiveness issues on mobile? The biggest problems we're struggling with right now are alignment of UI elements and how the images scale on mobile devices. Our header images disappear and instead we have a mono-color background.

Did any of you experience the same?

Thanks,

Karolina

[CKummer]

@SohilM 

Most of the reasons have been said. There is one more, the editor for private messages is too small, especially if you want to write a reply. For initial messages the editor is big enough. It would be great to have an "undock" feature like outlook. that would make it more handy to answer a message. 

[SohilM]

@CKummer Thanks. We do have this in our backlog. In the meantime, please contact support to increase the height of the editor. 

[MarkAtTruth]

We started to do images for headers but might lean towards solid colors for some of the headers. Good to know this was a problem so that we could avoid it @karolinalinda 

[MarkAtTruth]

Undock on mobile or both mobile and desktop? I like it!

also surprised that the mobile editor doesn't have an insert picture option. That is one I know my members will ask for to show in mobile mode.

[CKummer]

@MarkAtTruth The feature are still in there but you have to modify your skin to unhide those buttons. You should ask the support or your contact for that. 

[MattLa]

@DereckC