Fun Size Bytes (from @Tj)

Today’s Tumblr iPhone UI Change

In the category of “yet another change no one asked for” they changed the way that the “Load More Posts” button works on the iPhone interface.

Before today if you press and held the button it would let you open the next page on a separate page. Now, instead of giving me a number of the next page, it gives me a # and it just reloads the same page.

This will be absolutely horrible for going back many pages.

sigh

Why, Tumblr, why?

Ok, I can’t promise that no one ever asked for it, because, after all, there are people who get turned on by being thrown up on (thanks for teaching me that word, Textism) but suffice it to say that I can’t see how this is a good change.

I can see how it is a bad change:

1. Network connections are not error-proof. Opening the ‘next page’ of Tumblr posts in a separate page means that I can re-load that page if it fails to load for some reason. Given that this page is designed for iPhone use, we ought to ask ourselves: “How reliable is the network on which the iPhone resides?” If you are in the USA, that answer is “Not very!” With this change, I now how to reload all of the pages I have already read to catch back up to where I was. Before, all I would have to do is reload the very specific page that I was reading.

2. Click a link, then go back! Oh look! You’ve lost your place. This has already happened to me. I accidentally clicked a link that took me off my Dashboard, and when I went “Back” in Mobile Safari, it had forgotten all the stuff that I had loaded, and loaded a new Dashboard page.

3. I assume that if you Reblog a post on the iPhone (which is already a gawdawful experence), you will also lose your place, as in #2 above.)

So there are three very clear, practical negative aspects of this change. I wonder if anyone at Tumblr could give me three very clear, practical benefits of this change.

Aside: I just learned that I’m on the first page of Google results for Emetophiliacs. Won’t mom be proud when I tell her. Until I have to tell her what it means. I hope I have to tell her what it means.