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Comment by ilikehurdles | Hacker News Reader

I wish their web experience was improved on mobile. I have no interest in downloading apps of 90% of the websites I visit on my mobile browser. Right now the rare times I need to use github on mobile, I almost always have to switch to the desktop view because their mobile offering is so lacking in critical features.

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I wish they showed the full readme by default on mobile repository pages. If I'm on my phone, there's a good chance I'm only there to look at the readme, anyway. Just let the readme extend down without needing to expand it. Or at least, don't make expanding it a new page load.

Agree with you there. Many times I have been frustrated that I have to find and then click the readme button.

So much this.

I just miss the desktop mode link on the bottom of every page. Sure it's harder to use, and I spend most of my time in mobile view, but sometimes I just need to get shit done.

I actually sent them a support ticket about this, and this was their reply:

"I understand how the previous workflow would be useful, and we apologize for the inconvenience it has caused.

However, the good news is that the mobile team is working on releasing iOS and Android GitHub mobile applications early next year, which should resolve some of the limitations of the current mobile site."

Like really, just give me the desktop view back ffs.

On iOS at least, the "Request Desktop Site" option has been moved under the reader options in the URL bar. It seems to work for me, though is annoying.

You can still use the desktop site by using the 'Request Desktop Site' on your phone's browser (at least on most browsers). If you're logged in to GitHub, you can enable 'Opt out of mobile pages' in your account settings, though it sounds like you want to use both.

The "Request Desktop Site" button is unreliable in general, and does not in fact work here.

Best example of the above is YouTube. Have to reload like 3 times to get the real desktop site on iOS just to have background video playback and access to all videos on most pages.

(This is with YouTube set to request desktop site always in settings).

Do you have a scenario where it doesn't work? I use it all the time on Firefox for Android, works every time.

“People complain that our mobile website is half-baked. Let's make a half-baked app too. 1/2 + 1/2 = 1?”

This is literally why I hate native apps... they will always take resources away from the website which is an absolute necessity. Unless the service is app only (rare), now you have 3 separate teams working to build the same solution.

The native apps are usually a lot better to use on mobile phones / tablets though

That depends. For accessibility reasons I find browser style overrides and find-in-page better than apps with little or no customization.

> I wish their web experience was improved on mobile. I have no interest in downloading apps of 90% of the websites I visit on my mobile browser.

Totally agree with you here. Lots of other sites link to GitHub and being pulled out of the browser and into a native app is just not a good user experience. I've uninstalled Facebook and Twitter the same reason, and I enjoy using the social sites a lot more now.

If they just added a way to assign/reassign on mobile web. I have to switch to desktop sooo many times for this.

and labels... and who knows what else?

Still, one of the main reasons I love github is that the site works 1000x better than bitbucket on mobile browsers

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