Unexpected back button behaviour on mobile

z201205

I was viewing the contribute tag. I hit the star at the top of the screen and this appeared:

I hit the phone's back arrow at the bottom of the screen to go back to the contribute tag. What actually happened was the previous page prior to the contribute was displayed. I've noticed other back button surprises too on mobile.

ianmorland

z201205 I was viewing the contribute tag. I hit the star at the top of the screen

This is the expected outcome from tapping the star. It’s the tag subscription options

z201205

ianmorland I think you’ve misunderstood what I am complaining about. I was expecting the screenshot when I hit the star. What I wasn’t expecting was the subsequent behaviour: hitting the back button should dismiss that and the contribute tag page displayed as it was before I hit the star. What actually happened was that the previous page to that was displayed: it was as if the tag subscription options hadn’t been displayed.

z201205

Another unexpected back behaviour. This time from the preview site. I was on the list of tags page and hit the 3 lines at the top left. This appeared as expected:

I hit the back button to dismiss it but instead I was taken to the page before visiting the page with the 3 lines on. IE it was as if I’d never hit the 3 lines in the first place. That is not expected.

danwillen

z201205 in both these casses when you click the star or the hamburger menu (three lines) it opens a pop up (you can still see page you was on behind as your still on the same page) and not a new page the back button on your phone or browser will tack you back a page if you want to close the pop up you have to click in an area were pop up not displayed.

z201205

That’s a technical explanation but doesn’t address the unexpected behaviour. Tapping another part of the screen is non-intuitive. There must be a way of using the back button to dismiss these.

bobrobinson

z201205

Long press the back button and see what happens
Bob

i_am_sy

z201205 That’s a technical explanation but doesn’t address the unexpected behaviour. Tapping another part of the screen is non-intuitive. There must be a way of using the back button to dismiss these

It's not an unexpected behaviour it is the expected behaviour.

When you open the follow options, select an option there or tap the space above it and the menu will close.

When you open the hamburger, select and option there and you'll go to that page, tap to the right of the menu and it will close.

These are not bugs, this is how it should work.

z201205

bobrobinson long press presents browsing history.

z201205

z201205 and pressing back button whilst browsing history displayed dismisses it as expected

z201205

Disagree. Back button should dismiss. There’s plenty of questions on web on how to do it properly. For example, from https://joshblog.net/2018/enabling-the-back-button-to-cancel-confirmation-dialogs-in-react-apps/, he says

Users expect that dialogs, action sheets, alerts, drawers, and other pop-ups will close when the back button is pressed. This is especially true on Android (where the back button is globally available in all apps), but this behavior makes sense for any apps running in a web browser too — on both mobile and desktop. Usually, when a dialog is open, the back button should act the same as if the user had chosen the “Cancel” option. The worst thing that could happen (but it’s surprisingly common, unfortunately) is that the dialog will close and the browser will navigate away from the page that opened the dialog!

mrjeeves

z201205

Don’t complain about this to us.

Complain on the flarum issue tracker instead: https://GitHub.com/flarum/core/issues

It would be insanely difficult for giffgaff to modify the core functionality of the forum…

z201205

mrjeeves how am I expected to know it’s core functionality of flarum? Especially given the amount of customisation.
I’ll give it a go but I’d have thought that someone from giffgaff technical team would have been able to create a much better technical description. Oh well. ☹️

z201205

I’ve created the report at https://github.com/flarum/core/issues/2204.