We, the employees of TTAG, are writers — not programmers. I’m the exception, since I’m an incurable nerd and hold down an IT job to pay the bills. But even that gives me only so much ability to fix things when they go wrong. A few days ago the plug-in we use to provide a clean and usable mobile experience for readers on tablets and smartphones decided to push out a major update – which removed the ability to reply to specific comments. Our only options at the time: update and accept the new status quo or code something else ourselves (the old code version was no longer usable for technical reasons). We opted to update. The coders assure us that the ability to reply to specific comments is coming in future versions. Until then, we are aware of the problem and we will implement the fix as soon as it is available. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Completely understandable imo. This sort of thing is common on sites and blogs that allow comments.
I just wish they wouldn’t break more shit than they fix when they do stuff like this. There was one thing broken before, and it’s fixed now. However, there are at least three things broken now that worked fine before (including the Reply bug). That’s pretty frustrating.
It’s like the old song says.
A hundred and one bugs in the code,
A hundred and one bugs,
Find a bug and fix it all up,
A hundred and two bugs in the code!
… (And iterate)
Seriously, so long as there is no liability penalty for software companies who release buggy code, this is not likely to get better.
Matt – that’s called “progress.” Microsoft does it all the time.
It’s been unusually bad under Ballmer. Can’t wait until he leaves.
I assume this update is also to blame for the sites insistance on serving the mobile version to my desktop system the last few days?
Never had an issue before.
It might be related, but that’s usually fixable. After the check is performed to determine desktop/mobile, a cookie is set to keep it that way. If you change it to Desktop manually, it should fix the cookie, and it should remain that way. Are you clearing your cookies after every instance?
Those of us who tend to us private browsing mode tend have our coookies cleared after every browsing session. I find that on my ipad and on the desktop that the mobile version is offered to me about 30% of the time first. Both platforms I prefer to view the desktop version of the blog. I’ve also found that on the ipad even without private mode activated that it tries to switch me to mobile about 30% of the time too.
Also the Mobile/Desktop switch at the bottom of the page is a bit annoying when you have to scroll through pages of comments — could it be moved to the top of the comments?
Is the “every 10 seconds an advertisement alert pops up and probably will redirect you to google play” feature fixed, too?
Similarly, have they fixed the “trying to sneak malware downloads” thing yet? I’d given up on TTAG via mobile weeks ago.
Well, fix this, get rid of the new comment policy and contest spaming, bring back the super models and TTAG will once again be perfect, political correctness be damned
Here’s an interim fix:
– scroll to bottom of page
– click “desktop”
– scroll up to post you want to reply to
– click reply, reply, submit as usual
– scroll to bottom of page
– select “switch to mobile version” to restore readability.
It’s a little awkward but it works for now.
Re software updates … understood, and I share your pain, Nick. If we ever meet, I’ll buy the first round.
Not sure that’s the only glitch. Now, when I go to the TTAG website from my desktop, I get what appears to be the mobile version, except that the url is the regular version. When I duly refresh or click a post, I get the desktop version. Now I see other people are getting the same glitch too.
No, I am not clearing my cookies or cache.
@John,
The desktop version, when run on a mobile, spaces out comments
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And they become virtually impossible to read.
And the prompts coming up on ttag telling me my phone has a virus and needs to download… something (probably a virus)?
Related to the ads. Please ping us whenever you see one of those pop-ups, preferably with a screenshot, and we’ll nuke it.
they look like javascript alerts. Check my posts for some of the urls – one is from ads.yahoo.com. They really suck and interrupt everything from scrolling, to posting comments, etc.
this is the one: Nym1.ib.adnxs.com
yea, now it’s saying TTAG is saying there are viruses and transitionig to Google play for “Clean Master”.
While we’re on mobile issues, all YouTube imbedded videos leave a ridiculously long black bottom border that blocks a ridiculous amount of text in articles. I’m on opera classic on android.
That sounds like Opera. I’m not seeing that in either Dolphin or the native web browser.
Half the time the mobile version loads up while I’m viewing on a desktop, and when I view the site on a tablet or mobile device, I get pop up ads and other assorted garbage trying to install apps without my permission, crashing the browser.
This site has really fallen off.
This ha ( Nym1.ib.adnxs.com alert popped up)s been ticking me off, too. I am heavily considering adblock on my android, but do not want to do it because they deserce revenue. At least the badoink ads have stopped. Porn popups were really uncool.
Thanks Nick. Keep us updated. Let us know as soon as this issue is fixed and get a move on – Otherwise we will have to start back-charging TTAG for the limited functionality entitled to us per our agreement.
Am I the only one who can’t even get to the mobile sight from my phone anymore? Every time I try, it crashes