From time to time I suggest to people that they use the search box top right or look under pinned posts only to be told that these do not appear on their screen. This has always puzzled me using a proper desk top PC and one or two others have stated that their ipads or whatever don't have these areas visible.
Today I was talking with a very clever chap who is both a computer programmer and system tester and asked him if this was correct and if so why. What he told me explains it all and amazed me. Apparently any website onto which you log can tell if you are using a phone, i pad or similar device rather than a proper PC and crops the screen accordingly to avoid overly tiny characters and writing. It removes lots of data from round the edges so that you can read what is most important in the middle. So the moral is that if you want full fat Healthunlocked then use a PC.
I never understood this.
Bob
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BobD
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I am on iPad and see search option at top of screen.
You can scroll to top of screen to see it, if it is not immediately visible.
I wonder if some people who are not seeing the edges of the webpage may be using something like a zoom option (browser automatically zooming in to centre of screen to see things bigger).
For anyone who is having problems with this, it may be worth looking in your browser settings for display options.
I’m a techie myself and use both phones, tablets and desktop computers daily.
So, yes websites can tell if I am browsing on a phone or computer, but if you use an iPhone for example if you hold to the right of the address bar at the top of the screen you will see a 3/4 circle with an arrow. If you press and hold on that it will give you the option to select desktop version of a webpage.
Personally, I mostly only use my phone on here and there is the magnifying glass option at the top of the screen on this site, so there is no excuse for anyone not to use the search function really other than laziness or not knowing how to navigate a forum.
On an Android phone, just click on the magnifying glass at the top right of the page to do a search. On my phone now, but usually on a PC.
Have you all noticed how you have a covid 19 app on your phone now? For Android go to Settings and scroll to Google to see. Who knew we were having that put on our phones? I guess we have no say in it!
On IPhone go to Settings, Privacy, Health. The app is turned off now. If you ask your mobile phone a question about the covid 19 app it will tell you all about it.
Replying to you jeanjeannie50 , Thankyou for the instructions. I looked, and remembered I’d deleted Health app ages ago. I figured it's just too intrusive/another data scraping effort.
I use an iPad and I can see related posts and pinned posts, I probably don’t have zoom applied.
About searching though, last time I checked, if you search using the magnifying glass at the top of the screen it searches the entire site, brings up a lot of things that aren’t relevant and can be frustrating.
If you click on posts, just under the af association logo the page then shows “search af association” much more relevant, it took me ages to figure this out.
I had a problem a short while ago where web pages would not load (from email links or web searches) they would start loading then freeze. I could only use the app and I really did not like it at all, did not read anything like as much.
When I finally found Customercare on there I emailed and they sorted it. I have no idea what was wrong though.
I had that same problem, too, a while ago, Visitingcat, and Customer Care sorted it out for me although it still does go to the app sometimes and I don’t like it as much either.
I hardly ever use browsers now for anything and prefer the apps - with one exception - HU! I’ve just deleted their App and returned to browser as the functionality of the App is appalling and it is very invasive - almost as much so as Microsoft.
My understanding is that is that it is the browser that can also influence what is displayed and I certainly get the search function on iPad browser. I’m with Boombiddy - very often people are unaware of setting functions.
I would just like to add... sometimes people coming to this site are too stressed by symptoms to “see” everything.
If you are already familiar with the conventions & symbols and their meanings and where on the screen to expect to see them, it is easy to forget what it is like not to know. It's a lot to take in at once for someone who is unfamiliar with it.
For me, I am very familiar with the digital world, I used to write software for a living. Yet I cannot scan a screen the way I can scan a piece of paper (the other way round from a lot of people with dyslexia). I can miss vital info in eg. an email, or on a big (physical world) message board.
So even without ‘screen blindness’, combine panic (just diagnosed with AF), and a steep learning curve, and the brightest, least lazy person might just get overwhelmed and ‘screen blind’.
I always used to use the website to use HU, still do sometimes even on iPad mini because everything is displayed on it. The Apple HU app however only shows posts and a search symbol at the top. I have assumed this is why people don’t see all the possibilities unless they know their way around the app. I suggest newbies use the website in preference to the app.
I look for the three dots in a vertical line at the top right of my phone screen. This gives me access to the Desktop site if I need to see pinned and other posts.
I would use a PC any day. Even with quite a big screen on my Samsung, it's still rubbish for things like the weather. Also my posture is poor.
On my desktop I get a nice big screen, it's so much faster to do things and is at eye level. I have to do quite a bit of research and that would be impossible on a phone.
Having said that, the phone is good for GPS. I had to record an Anglo-Saxon fish trap last week, I was up to my knees in water and that would have been tricky on a desktop 😁
It's not a full answer though. Any web site designer or software developer worth their salt, optimises their designs to run perfectly well and fully functional on all those different platforms. Whoever has commissioned HU web site got a rum deal because they didn't specify that it should work on mobiles as well as desktop machines and the people building it didn't do it. Not good. This feels like an old-fashioned web platform to me. It's time it got updated, improved. The search isn't great even on a desktop.
I find it a bit of a fiddle getting the correct search box. I don't want to search the whole of Health Unlocked Site just the AFA section and to do so have to go to My Hub/AFA/Posts.... to access the AFA search box which is in the middle of not the top of the page 😊 .
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