Major SkyriseCities bug [list]. Please move my thread back to UrbanToronto

[mdrejhon]

[Edit: The Hamilton General Service Discussion thread has been moved back to UrbanToronto, at least for now]

Hello,

There are major forum-breaking bugs on SkyriseCities.

My thread was on UrbanToronto for almost a year before recently being moved to Skyrise Cities. Could you please move the "Hamilton General Service Discussion" thread back to UrbanToronto, as GTHA still includes "Hamilton" in Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area.

I am a mobile software developer, so I use iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, iPad, etc.

Bugs on SkyriseCities:
1. Pinch-zoom doesn't work on iPhone and iPad when scrolling threads.
2. iPhone Landscape mode doesn't display properly, especially when creating a new thread
3. On some desktop web browsers I tried (certain versions of Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome), it's impossible to easily scroll to bottom of this page of this forum thread until you refresh or maximize browser window.
4. The translucent SkyriseCities bar at the top obscures many mobile phone screens, hindering scrolling
5. On one of my desktops, scrolling upwards/downwards through photo-heavy pages has 10x worse performance than UrbanToronto -- I think it's the use of stationary CSS layer that's causing it. Please provide an option to hide this bar, an option to keep it docked only to the top of the page (pushpin icon button?).
6. I can't see the whole SkyriseCities menu on square-screen devices such as a BlackBerry Classic or BlackBerry passport which works perfectly with UrbanToronto. Granted, BlackBerries are in decline, but the same problem happens in landscape mode on Android/iPhone too.
7. Again, pinch-zoom doesn't work on SkyriseCities Forum threads on iPhones! UrbanToronto does.

If you look at your web logs, at least 25%-50% of your forum members are using mobile devices. My experience these days, is that percentage of web users going mobile, is going very high. Commuters (who use Transportation forums while they use), are typically using mobile devices for this.

I respectfully ask the forum owners to move my "Hamilton General Service Discussion" thread back to the UrbanToronto forum where it resided for more than a year because:
(1) SkyriseCities still has many bugs that needs to be fixed -- first -- before you move threads
(2) GTHA includes "Hamilton" in it; so it is an acceptable interim solution.
(3) I suggest my thread should have been grandfatherable in the original GTHA transportation forum because it has been there for years.

Also, I humbly and respectfully ask the admins to please not edit my signature, until this is solved. Let's get all the breaking bugs are fixed, OR get the thread moved back, whichever is first -- then we don't need the link in my signature. Remember I have spent over 100 hours on some photography just for this thread (repeated construction site visits), and some of my UrbanToronto photos got reused into these published GO train articles here #1 and here #2 based on photos I took and posted in the multiple pages of the thread that got moved. These articles I would have never written if it were not for the great inspiration of UrbanToronto. So you see, I have a personal blood & sweat stake in the thread. Please understand, and as a result, do not edit my signature. Most appreciated.

Thank you,
Mark Rejhon

 

[Edward Skira]

Thanks Mark.

 

[mdrejhon]

Additional bug reports:
8. When I try to reply to a private message (PM) on Skyrise Cities on an iPhone or iPad, I can't scroll backwards to read the original message that I am trying to reply to. The page is unscrollable.
9. Many of the iPhone bugs also exist on Samsung Galaxy (Android). I did not try long enough to see if there's a 100% bug match but it seems Android isn't unscathed either;

Will add more as I discover...

 

[mdrejhon]

10. Scrollbar is partially hidden at upper-right corner by the persistent bar at top.
Need to shorten the width of the bar to reveal more. (In addition to ability to dock and/or autohide the bar).

 

[mdrejhon]

I personally demonstrated a small fraction (25%) of these bugs in person to Craig (interchange42) who met me at the Don Valley Cable Car community consultation. It was a pleasure to meet him.

Heads up that later this month when I have a new batch of photographs -- I will not be using that thread anymore since it has some bugs rendering it unusable on some of my mobile devices. For this reason, I will need to be recreating "Hamilton General Service Discussion [Part #2]" in the original UrbanToronto forum where the thread got moved from to a system I am unable to properly use from some of my devices. Alternatively, my preference is that one of the Admins here (interchange42, Edward, etc), move the SkyriseCities thread back to UrbanToronto, but if this doesn't happen -- expect a brand new thread to be created. The compromise that most Hamilton-related transportation issues got confined to one thread and that seemed to satisfy most people. However this compromise can't be placed on a site I'm unable to use from some of the devices I currently own. If this is against the forum rules, or the thread cannot be grandfathered under the GTHA metro area reason, I plead extenuating circumstances (bugs). Thank you for your due consideration in solving this catch-22.

Fellow forum member is currently agreeing:

^ I'm also not a fan of this [SkyriseCities] site. It doesn't work well on my mobile and the search function doesn't work half the time.
It's also very slow!

I'll be visiting UT and this site a lot less now.

 

[mdrejhon]

Thank you for moving the thread back!

For now/temporarily/permanently/grandfathered?
Either way, I've now edited my signature.

As a fellow software developer (HTML/CSS/etc), I can understand the frustrations perhaps a different department that didn't test it enough. And maybe looking at possibly paying more money to get bugs fixed. Etc. Either way, hope you can get the site working well. Transportation is a thorny issue, given Metrolinx expanding its coverage area over time. Though personally, I prefer a grandfathering of this specific thread, since it will still take a while for SkyriseCities to gain any significant Hamilton audience, while I know more than a dozen Hamiltonian UrbanToronto members, some that may be more fickle than I am. Please include me as a beta tester (I volunteer this service...free) at least two months before you move this thread again, nudge, nudge.

 

[Midtown Urbanist]

Personally, I think Hamilton should be included in Toronto on SkyRiseCities while Kitchener-Waterloo should have it's own section. That is where I see the cut-off point being.

I think this is best done by having the prefix [Hamilton] in front of forum threads relating to Hamilton development projects, just like we currently have [Mississauga], [Burlington] or [Markham] prefixes for those projects. That way they can all exist on SRC in one happy Toronto section.