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Offer to bounce desktop users back to desktop
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Description

I find myself consistently being linked to pages in the mobile view. Like here:
http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/2elpl9/til_there_was_a_movement_in_the_early_1900s_that/

It'd be nice to offer users a link back to the desktop view.


Version: unspecified
Severity: normal

Details

Reference
bz70045

Event Timeline

bzimport raised the priority of this task from to Needs Triage.Nov 22 2014, 3:28 AM
bzimport set Reference to bz70045.
bzimport added a subscriber: Unknown Object (MLST).

bingle-admin wrote:

Prioritization and scheduling of this bug is tracked on Trello card https://trello.com/c/BN5D8lRS

You mean the link to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Glushkov ???

In MobileFrontend you have a link in the footer menu called "Desktop". Clicking this will redirect you to the desktop version :)

I believe Nik is asking for an easier way then scrolling to the bottom, which is worth considering e.g. one line banner at top of page.

I believe the reason we don't bounce back automatically is due to how Varnish works. There are various scripts out there e.g. Chrome extensions however that should take care of this.

I mean the link to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy_movement at the top of the page - its where reddit usually puts it but if you're not used to it I don't imagine its intuitive.

I don't think the link at the bottom is sufficient - mostly because I didn't know about it and I've been exposed to this issue several times. Maybe a link off the left or right? Like, to where it'd be off the screen on a small screen? I dunno. I've seen several websites do this and they normally put it some place relatively unobtrusive at the top.

Top of the page is already cluttered. Marking it as requiring designers' input, but I doubt that's something we want done.

I came to suggest the same thing, though I want to go one step further: you should automatically be redirected to the desktop version if you are on a desktop. It works the other way around when on mobile, so it should do the same when on a desktop. Yes, I know of the desktop link at the bottom, but that should be unnecessary in my opinion.

Two problems with this:

  1. I believe the additional redirects via varnish could clobber us (Max will know more on this)
  2. Some people actually prefer to use the mobile site on desktop e.g. https://twitter.com/noisysocks/status/507329713497337856

A more prominent link would be a good first step.

(In reply to Jon from comment #7)

Two problems with this:

  1. I believe the additional redirects via varnish could clobber us (Max will

know more on this)

If done carefully and tested thoroughly, there's nothing preventing us from doing this technically, however I think it would be a step backwards product-wise.

(In reply to Jon Harald Søby from comment #6)

I came to suggest the same thing, though I want to go one step further: you
should automatically be redirected to the desktop version if you are on a
desktop. It works the other way around when on mobile, so it should do the
same when on a desktop. Yes, I know of the desktop link at the bottom, but
that should be unnecessary in my opinion.

Well, we automatically redirect mobile users to the mobile site because the desktop site is pretty unreadable/unusable on a small device -- the same cannot be said of the mobile site on a large screen :)

Aside from just not being used to the mobile interface, is there something that negatively impacts your reading experience when you follow a link to an article and end up on the mobile view?

FWIW, we've gotten quite a bit of positive feedback from readers who end up on the mobile site on larger screen devices, so it's worth keeping in mind that while those of us who are most familiar with the desktop site may not like the mobile view & want an immediate way to switch back, many readers don't necessarily share that opinion -- and as the category of mobile-first and mobile-only users grows in pace with Internet trends, the people who primarily know the mobile interface will probably soon outnumber us desktop-first/desktop only folks :)

(In reply to Maryana Pinchuk from comment #9)

Well, we automatically redirect mobile users to the mobile site because the
desktop site is pretty unreadable/unusable on a small device -- the same
cannot be said of the mobile site on a large screen :)

Fair point. :-)

Aside from just not being used to the mobile interface, is there something
that negatively impacts your reading experience when you follow a link to an
article and end up on the mobile view?

Yeah, I guess for casual readers it alright, but as an editor it's not really what I want or need ­­-- all (well, most of) the tools I need are gone. Perhaps a better suggestion is to give *editors* a way of automatically being redirected, via some setting?

Jaredzimmerman-WMF claimed this task.

given the known, and standard (across mobile and desktop) place for the current switch i recommend not having a secondary location, especially one that could be confused as a push to use a different site, when there is no issue using the mobile skin on desktop. We've seen the opt-out numbers for mobile skin on tablet and the numbers are very low, but present, this tell us A. that most users are fine using the mobile skin on other platforms, and B. user are able to find the switch when they do want to switch.