22 ms·

I agree with you except the one pain point that Wikipedia still continues to use "m.*" sub-domains for displaying mobile content. I know most people exclusively

by jitix 5y ago

I agree with you except the one pain point that Wikipedia still continues to use "m.*" sub-domains for displaying mobile content. I know most people exclusively use mobile these days but I use desktop browsers for reading more than 60% of the time and its really annoying to click on a Wikipedia link on HN/Reddit and having it open the mobile site on desktop. It's OK to use m.* subdomains instead of reactive design but there should at least be redirects to the correct subdomains. edit: formatting

thaumasiotes 5y ago
[flagged]
- tshaddox 5y ago
  > But I would say that it's the HN commenters being incredibly obnoxious, not wikipedia being wrong for giving you the mobile site when you specifically ask for it. But it's kinda crazy that if I'm on my phone I can't just share a URL to a page with someone who happens to be using a desktop. While I'm not sure if this is made explicit in any of the RFCs or standard docs, in my view a URL should be a locator for a resource that is agnostic of the user agent.
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    > But it's kinda crazy that if I'm on my phone I can't just share a URL to a page with someone who happens to be using a desktop. > in my view a URL should be a locator for a resource that is agnostic of the user agent. You're not making sense. The mobile page has a dedicated URL. If you're browsing it, then sharing the URL will send anyone else to the same resource you're browsing, regardless of their user agent. Everyone agrees that this is a bad thing for you to do. Don't do it. The standard page will redirect mobile user-agents to the mobile page. It is a better URL to give out in every possible way. But note that this is the opposite of what you're saying; the URL that behaves the way you say you want is the bad one that you should avoid sharing. I am sympathetic to the view that the URL should just point wherever it points. This would require a change to Wikipedia's standard page so that it would display when requested on mobile instead of redirecting. That's fine. But sharing mobile links would still be awful behavior. Link to the standard page. That's what makes it the standard page.
    - tshaddox 5y ago
      You're mistaken. Wikipedia automatically redirects you to the m. website if you type "en.wikipedia.org" into your phone browser. The same is true even if you explicitly type an article's URL into your phone browser, like "en.wikipedia.org/London". Google and Bing will also show mobile URLs in search results (although DuckDuckGo does not). The only way to see the actual desktop version is to click on the "Desktop" link at the very bottom of a mobile page, and even that just sets a cookie to prevent redirection back to the mobile site, so it doesn't work across multiple devices or private browsing sessions.
      - thaumasiotes 5y ago
        > You're mistaken. Wikipedia automatically redirects you to the m. website if you type "en.wikipedia.org" into your phone browser. The same is true even if you explicitly type an article's URL into your phone browser, like "en.wikipedia.org/London". What am I mistaken about? This is exactly what I said happens. I focused this information pretty heavily: >> The standard page will redirect mobile user-agents to the mobile page. >> I am sympathetic to the view that the URL should just point wherever it points. This would require a change to Wikipedia's standard page so that it would display when requested on mobile instead of redirecting.
        tshaddox 5y ago
        You're mistaken that being on the "m." subdomain indicates that you have made some decision to do so, and that sharing that URL ought to send anyone to the mobile design. On the contrary, the entire point of a URL is for sharing a resource, and if a URL to a public resources is not shareable that is a mistake on the part of the web site, not a mistake on the part of the visitor. It's certainly not the case that "Everyone agrees that this is a bad thing for you to do." It's not a bad thing for you to do, it is precisely what you ought to do. As I explained elsewhere on the thread, one could just as easily argue that sharing the "desktop" URL is also inappropriate, because some people might want to see the "mobile" design even if they're on a desktop computer (because the "mobile" design is in fact responsive).
- jfrunyon 5y ago
  It's kinda strange that you think someone who is on a phone copying a link and sharing it with someone who is not on a phone, is the latter person "specifically ask[ing]" for the mobile page.
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    It's strange that when you ask for en.m.wikipedia.org, Wikipedia responds by giving you what you wanted? There is no way to interpret requesting a dedicated mobile URL other than as specifically asking for the mobile version of the page. Or are you saying Wikipedia should be aware that you got the link from your obnoxious friend? HTTP doesn't really allow for that.
    - namdnay 5y ago
      You need to take a step back. The end user is not asking for https whatever, they’re asking to see the same Wikipedia page their friend saw, adapted to their screen. Whatever gets in the way of that is bad UX I guess the best way to do it would be to redirect the user to the correct domain based on agent, if they haven’t already chosen an override?
      - thaumasiotes 5y ago
        > The end user is not asking for https whatever, they’re asking to see the same Wikipedia page their friend saw, adapted to their screen. This is already the behavior of Wikipedia mobile pages. > I guess the best way to do it would be to redirect the user to the correct domain based on agent, if they haven’t already chosen an override? This, on the other hand, is already the behavior of Wikipedia's normal pages. The mobile page will give you what you asked for, and the normal page will give you what it thinks you probably want. These are both approaches that you could argue for. But I can't understand why everyone is trying to argue that the give-you-what-you-want approach is actually, if you think about it hard enough, the give-you-what-you-asked-for approach.
        jfrunyon 5y ago
GhettoComputers 5y ago
I’m sure there is JS that will redirect you to non mobile, pretty sure I installed something like that and never had that issue.
teddyh 5y ago
Firefox plugin: Skip Mobile Wikipedia https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/skip-mobile-wikipedia/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/skip-mobile-w...
chris_wot 5y ago
Down the bottom there is a link to the desktop version of the site.
- MawKKe 5y ago
  Whoa, thanks. However, that link is totally in the wrong place, no wonder I could not find it. I just assumed there was no such link/button and always angrily removed the 'm.' from each URL.
- kingcharles 5y ago
  TIL!
t-writescode 5y ago
Equally, I don't like it when websites try to guess what kind of browser I'm in and force me into the mobile experience when I have a window take up half the screen on a 1080p monitor, ... so I guess there's really no easy win for this :(
- dorianmariefr 5y ago
  I think proper media queries breakpoints solve this
  - YetAnotherNick 5y ago
    No, it won't. There is no clear distinction between mobile and tablet first of all.
    - alexchamberlain 5y ago
      Orientation and width not enough?
      - coldacid 5y ago
        When I pin a browser to the left or right side of one of my monitors, these sites will often go into mobile mode despite the fact that the browser is still wide enough that desktop mode works fine, merely because the window is now taller than it is wide. And I find that incredibly annoying.
  - mattnewton 5y ago
    This is hard and often done wrong- mobile phones are usually high dpi and have gotten quite large, so it can be hard to distinguish between a large phone and half a desktop screen. Some people get quite annoyed by being bumped into a mobile experience when you resize your window from fullscreen on a laptop.
    - iggldiggl 5y ago
Taywee 5y ago
Install Firefox Redirector: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/redirector/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/redirector/ Add a rule to redirect (https?://)?(\w+\.)m\.wikipedia.org(.*) to $1$2wikipedia.org$3 Then you never have to deal with mobile Wikipedia on desktop again. You can use this for other sites too, like forcing all uses of Reddit to always open in old.reddit.com.
- kirb 5y ago
  Just as a sidenote on the Reddit point, you can force old Reddit from your settings after you log in. That setting seems to stick even if you log out/your session times out, and you can go back to new Reddit with new.reddit.com.
tshaddox 5y ago
> It's OK to use m.* subdomains instead of reactive design but there should at least be redirects to the correct subdomains. I agree, although in the case of Wikipedia the "mobile" design is actually the one that is responsive. I want the "mobile" design on all browsers including my desktop. I believe you can actually set your default theme if you're logged into Wikipedia, but I don't know if their cookies eventually expire or what, but I often end up clicking on Wikipedia links and getting the awful "desktop" design. All of this is just to say that, yes, they shouldn't use separate "m." URLs, but it's just as wrong to get upset at mobile users sharing "m." URLs as it is to get upset at desktop users sharing URLs without the "m." Arguably if you expect all users to always share the most versatile URL, you should expect them to always share the "m." URL since it has a responsive design.
- Arnavion 5y ago
  Yes, I only use Wikipedia on a desktop and I exclusively use the m. site.
- stormbrew 5y ago
  I might be ok with "the mobile reactive version everywhere" if it didn't also lack a bunch of features. Not being able to easily get to the talk page to contextualize what you're reading makes the mobile site very frustrating.
  - frosted-flakes 5y ago
    Note that a link to the talk page has recently been added to the top of the mobile page.
    - stormbrew 5y ago
      Oh nice, thanks for letting me know! I can stop forcing it to desktop mode by default heh.
- judge2020 5y ago
  If it pinned the headings/outline to the left side of the article (like the extension showcased does) it'd be that much better for a responsive design on Desktop.
rdubz 5y ago
semi-OT but Twitter seems to have recently started putting "mobile.twitter.com" in my URL bar (on mobile), as well as adding a UUID in a "t" query param when you use their "copy link" flow, which is all annoying cruft to have to delete when sharing links. They used to just put "?s=19" through "?s=22" or so, which enumerated clients (desktop, mobile, Android, etc), which was better than the junk most other services stuff in (like utm_source and friends...)
pc86 5y ago
What bothers me most about this is that if you go to www on a mobile device, it redirects you to m - that's great, and probably the "right" thing to do. There is probably a "View Desktop Version" link on the mobile page, somewhere. But if you go to the m subdomain on a desktop device, there's no easy way to get to the desktop version without manually changing the URL. If you can redirect from www to m, surely you can redirect from m to www when appropriate.
- zamadatix 5y ago
  > But if you go to the m subdomain on a desktop device, there's no easy way to get to the desktop version without manually changing the URL. You may find humour in the comically small "desktop" link at the very end of the page, next to the privacy policy.
- maximedupre 5y ago
  I feel like there's the issue on Reddit
  - mananaysiempre 5y ago
    I feel like this is the least of the issues of Reddit(’s mobile version, social ones excluded for lack of knowledge).
- aembleton 5y ago
  I use the No More Mobile plugin to fix that: https://github.com/spixy/NoMoreMobile https://github.com/spixy/NoMoreMobile
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- tekknik 5y ago
  For me on safari I just click “request desktop site” and it does redirect me to the non mobile domain.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dpifke 5y ago
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T214998 https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T214998
- account42 5y ago
  That seems to be about serving the different variants directly instead of the redirect when there really should only be one variant that makes the best use of any viewport size.
PaulHoule 5y ago
I dunno. Maybe it is different on a phone but on a tablet the desktop Wikipedia is better than the mobile Wikipedia.
- Swizec 5y ago
  +1 to this. My iPad is plenty big enough please show me the real Wikipedia. The redirect is incredibly frustrating. On a phone, the mobile Wikipedia is perfect tho.
grishka 5y ago
I got annoyed at this enough to write this tiny userscript: // ==UserScript== // @name Redirect from mobile wiki to desktop // @namespace http://tampermonkey.net/ // @version 0.1 // @description try to take over the world! // @author You // @match https://*.m.wikipedia.org/* // @grant none // @run-at document-start // ==/UserScript== window.location.hostname=window.location.hostname.split(".")[0]+".wikipedia.org";
- selcuka 5y ago
  Hint: Use `document.location.replace()` to prevent the back button from going back to the mobile version, creating an endless loop.
CobaltFire 5y ago
Counterpoint to this: I’m career military and the fact that Wikipedia (and Facebook) have low bandwidth m.* redirects made life immensely easier on the limited internet in far off places. We really appreciated it being available.
- account42 5y ago
  Just checked the first acticle linked on the home page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugoslav_gunboat_Beli_Orao https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugoslav_gunboat_Beli_Orao - 913.39 KB / 298.41 KB transferred https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugoslav_gunboat_Beli_Orao https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugoslav_gunboat_Beli_Orao - 919.43 KB / 270.18 KB transferred Not much of a difference. Would be better to spend time optimizing the desktop site for everyone.
sam0x17 5y ago
As one of the people who uses a mobile device only if I have no other choice (which is never), I definitely feel the pain of this.
matheusmoreira 5y ago
Yeah, it's so annoying. I always strip the mobile subdomain when I post links to wikipedia.
dwaite 5y ago
It is also pretty fundamentally broken on iPad, since whether it reports itself as a mobile or desktop device depends on the size of the browser window.
paraknight 5y ago
Just a small nitpick: you mean _responsive_ design (_reactive_ means something else)

by jitix 5y ago

thaumasiotes 5y ago

[flagged]

tshaddox 5y ago
> But I would say that it's the HN commenters being incredibly obnoxious, not wikipedia being wrong for giving you the mobile site when you specifically ask for it. But it's kinda crazy that if I'm on my phone I can't just share a URL to a page with someone who happens to be using a desktop. While I'm not sure if this is made explicit in any of the RFCs or standard docs, in my view a URL should be a locator for a resource that is agnostic of the user agent.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  > But it's kinda crazy that if I'm on my phone I can't just share a URL to a page with someone who happens to be using a desktop. > in my view a URL should be a locator for a resource that is agnostic of the user agent. You're not making sense. The mobile page has a dedicated URL. If you're browsing it, then sharing the URL will send anyone else to the same resource you're browsing, regardless of their user agent. Everyone agrees that this is a bad thing for you to do. Don't do it. The standard page will redirect mobile user-agents to the mobile page. It is a better URL to give out in every possible way. But note that this is the opposite of what you're saying; the URL that behaves the way you say you want is the bad one that you should avoid sharing. I am sympathetic to the view that the URL should just point wherever it points. This would require a change to Wikipedia's standard page so that it would display when requested on mobile instead of redirecting. That's fine. But sharing mobile links would still be awful behavior. Link to the standard page. That's what makes it the standard page.
  - tshaddox 5y ago
    You're mistaken. Wikipedia automatically redirects you to the m. website if you type "en.wikipedia.org" into your phone browser. The same is true even if you explicitly type an article's URL into your phone browser, like "en.wikipedia.org/London". Google and Bing will also show mobile URLs in search results (although DuckDuckGo does not). The only way to see the actual desktop version is to click on the "Desktop" link at the very bottom of a mobile page, and even that just sets a cookie to prevent redirection back to the mobile site, so it doesn't work across multiple devices or private browsing sessions.
    - thaumasiotes 5y ago
      > You're mistaken. Wikipedia automatically redirects you to the m. website if you type "en.wikipedia.org" into your phone browser. The same is true even if you explicitly type an article's URL into your phone browser, like "en.wikipedia.org/London". What am I mistaken about? This is exactly what I said happens. I focused this information pretty heavily: >> The standard page will redirect mobile user-agents to the mobile page. >> I am sympathetic to the view that the URL should just point wherever it points. This would require a change to Wikipedia's standard page so that it would display when requested on mobile instead of redirecting.
      - tshaddox 5y ago
        You're mistaken that being on the "m." subdomain indicates that you have made some decision to do so, and that sharing that URL ought to send anyone to the mobile design. On the contrary, the entire point of a URL is for sharing a resource, and if a URL to a public resources is not shareable that is a mistake on the part of the web site, not a mistake on the part of the visitor. It's certainly not the case that "Everyone agrees that this is a bad thing for you to do." It's not a bad thing for you to do, it is precisely what you ought to do. As I explained elsewhere on the thread, one could just as easily argue that sharing the "desktop" URL is also inappropriate, because some people might want to see the "mobile" design even if they're on a desktop computer (because the "mobile" design is in fact responsive).
jfrunyon 5y ago
It's kinda strange that you think someone who is on a phone copying a link and sharing it with someone who is not on a phone, is the latter person "specifically ask[ing]" for the mobile page.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  It's strange that when you ask for en.m.wikipedia.org, Wikipedia responds by giving you what you wanted? There is no way to interpret requesting a dedicated mobile URL other than as specifically asking for the mobile version of the page. Or are you saying Wikipedia should be aware that you got the link from your obnoxious friend? HTTP doesn't really allow for that.
  - namdnay 5y ago
    You need to take a step back. The end user is not asking for https whatever, they’re asking to see the same Wikipedia page their friend saw, adapted to their screen. Whatever gets in the way of that is bad UX I guess the best way to do it would be to redirect the user to the correct domain based on agent, if they haven’t already chosen an override?
    - thaumasiotes 5y ago
      > The end user is not asking for https whatever, they’re asking to see the same Wikipedia page their friend saw, adapted to their screen. This is already the behavior of Wikipedia mobile pages. > I guess the best way to do it would be to redirect the user to the correct domain based on agent, if they haven’t already chosen an override? This, on the other hand, is already the behavior of Wikipedia's normal pages. The mobile page will give you what you asked for, and the normal page will give you what it thinks you probably want. These are both approaches that you could argue for. But I can't understand why everyone is trying to argue that the give-you-what-you-want approach is actually, if you think about it hard enough, the give-you-what-you-asked-for approach.
      - jfrunyon 5y ago

GhettoComputers 5y ago

I’m sure there is JS that will redirect you to non mobile, pretty sure I installed something like that and never had that issue.

teddyh 5y ago

Firefox plugin: Skip Mobile Wikipedia https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/skip-mobile-wikipedia/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/skip-mobile-w...

chris_wot 5y ago

Down the bottom there is a link to the desktop version of the site.

MawKKe 5y ago
Whoa, thanks. However, that link is totally in the wrong place, no wonder I could not find it. I just assumed there was no such link/button and always angrily removed the 'm.' from each URL.
kingcharles 5y ago
TIL!

t-writescode 5y ago

Equally, I don't like it when websites try to guess what kind of browser I'm in and force me into the mobile experience when I have a window take up half the screen on a 1080p monitor, ... so I guess there's really no easy win for this :(

dorianmariefr 5y ago
I think proper media queries breakpoints solve this
- YetAnotherNick 5y ago
  No, it won't. There is no clear distinction between mobile and tablet first of all.
  - alexchamberlain 5y ago
    Orientation and width not enough?
    - coldacid 5y ago
      When I pin a browser to the left or right side of one of my monitors, these sites will often go into mobile mode despite the fact that the browser is still wide enough that desktop mode works fine, merely because the window is now taller than it is wide. And I find that incredibly annoying.
- mattnewton 5y ago
  This is hard and often done wrong- mobile phones are usually high dpi and have gotten quite large, so it can be hard to distinguish between a large phone and half a desktop screen. Some people get quite annoyed by being bumped into a mobile experience when you resize your window from fullscreen on a laptop.
  - iggldiggl 5y ago

Taywee 5y ago

Install Firefox Redirector: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/redirector/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/redirector/ Add a rule to redirect (https?://)?(\w+\.)m\.wikipedia.org(.*) to $1$2wikipedia.org$3 Then you never have to deal with mobile Wikipedia on desktop again. You can use this for other sites too, like forcing all uses of Reddit to always open in old.reddit.com.

kirb 5y ago
Just as a sidenote on the Reddit point, you can force old Reddit from your settings after you log in. That setting seems to stick even if you log out/your session times out, and you can go back to new Reddit with new.reddit.com.

tshaddox 5y ago

> It's OK to use m.* subdomains instead of reactive design but there should at least be redirects to the correct subdomains. I agree, although in the case of Wikipedia the "mobile" design is actually the one that is responsive. I want the "mobile" design on all browsers including my desktop. I believe you can actually set your default theme if you're logged into Wikipedia, but I don't know if their cookies eventually expire or what, but I often end up clicking on Wikipedia links and getting the awful "desktop" design. All of this is just to say that, yes, they shouldn't use separate "m." URLs, but it's just as wrong to get upset at mobile users sharing "m." URLs as it is to get upset at desktop users sharing URLs without the "m." Arguably if you expect all users to always share the most versatile URL, you should expect them to always share the "m." URL since it has a responsive design.

Arnavion 5y ago
Yes, I only use Wikipedia on a desktop and I exclusively use the m. site.
stormbrew 5y ago
I might be ok with "the mobile reactive version everywhere" if it didn't also lack a bunch of features. Not being able to easily get to the talk page to contextualize what you're reading makes the mobile site very frustrating.
- frosted-flakes 5y ago
  Note that a link to the talk page has recently been added to the top of the mobile page.
  - stormbrew 5y ago
    Oh nice, thanks for letting me know! I can stop forcing it to desktop mode by default heh.
judge2020 5y ago
If it pinned the headings/outline to the left side of the article (like the extension showcased does) it'd be that much better for a responsive design on Desktop.

rdubz 5y ago

semi-OT but Twitter seems to have recently started putting "mobile.twitter.com" in my URL bar (on mobile), as well as adding a UUID in a "t" query param when you use their "copy link" flow, which is all annoying cruft to have to delete when sharing links. They used to just put "?s=19" through "?s=22" or so, which enumerated clients (desktop, mobile, Android, etc), which was better than the junk most other services stuff in (like utm_source and friends...)

pc86 5y ago

What bothers me most about this is that if you go to www on a mobile device, it redirects you to m - that's great, and probably the "right" thing to do. There is probably a "View Desktop Version" link on the mobile page, somewhere. But if you go to the m subdomain on a desktop device, there's no easy way to get to the desktop version without manually changing the URL. If you can redirect from www to m, surely you can redirect from m to www when appropriate.

zamadatix 5y ago
> But if you go to the m subdomain on a desktop device, there's no easy way to get to the desktop version without manually changing the URL. You may find humour in the comically small "desktop" link at the very end of the page, next to the privacy policy.
maximedupre 5y ago
I feel like there's the issue on Reddit
- mananaysiempre 5y ago
  I feel like this is the least of the issues of Reddit(’s mobile version, social ones excluded for lack of knowledge).
aembleton 5y ago
I use the No More Mobile plugin to fix that: https://github.com/spixy/NoMoreMobile https://github.com/spixy/NoMoreMobile
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
tekknik 5y ago
For me on safari I just click “request desktop site” and it does redirect me to the non mobile domain.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

dpifke 5y ago

https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T214998 https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T214998

account42 5y ago
That seems to be about serving the different variants directly instead of the redirect when there really should only be one variant that makes the best use of any viewport size.

PaulHoule 5y ago

I dunno. Maybe it is different on a phone but on a tablet the desktop Wikipedia is better than the mobile Wikipedia.

Swizec 5y ago
+1 to this. My iPad is plenty big enough please show me the real Wikipedia. The redirect is incredibly frustrating. On a phone, the mobile Wikipedia is perfect tho.

grishka 5y ago

I got annoyed at this enough to write this tiny userscript: // ==UserScript== // @name Redirect from mobile wiki to desktop // @namespace http://tampermonkey.net/ // @version 0.1 // @description try to take over the world! // @author You // @match https://*.m.wikipedia.org/* // @grant none // @run-at document-start // ==/UserScript== window.location.hostname=window.location.hostname.split(".")[0]+".wikipedia.org";

selcuka 5y ago
Hint: Use `document.location.replace()` to prevent the back button from going back to the mobile version, creating an endless loop.

CobaltFire 5y ago

Counterpoint to this: I’m career military and the fact that Wikipedia (and Facebook) have low bandwidth m.* redirects made life immensely easier on the limited internet in far off places. We really appreciated it being available.

account42 5y ago
Just checked the first acticle linked on the home page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugoslav_gunboat_Beli_Orao https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugoslav_gunboat_Beli_Orao - 913.39 KB / 298.41 KB transferred https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugoslav_gunboat_Beli_Orao https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugoslav_gunboat_Beli_Orao - 919.43 KB / 270.18 KB transferred Not much of a difference. Would be better to spend time optimizing the desktop site for everyone.

sam0x17 5y ago

As one of the people who uses a mobile device only if I have no other choice (which is never), I definitely feel the pain of this.

matheusmoreira 5y ago

Yeah, it's so annoying. I always strip the mobile subdomain when I post links to wikipedia.

dwaite 5y ago

It is also pretty fundamentally broken on iPad, since whether it reports itself as a mobile or desktop device depends on the size of the browser window.

paraknight 5y ago

Just a small nitpick: you mean _responsive_ design (_reactive_ means something else)