Platform: mobile (iOS)
Description of need:
Currently the website supports more text formatting options than the iOS app in notes and comments (and profiles, etc.). Thankfully embedded hyperlinks currently show up, but it would be nice if the other formatting options were available/displayed in the mobile app.
Options on website:
Display on website:
Display on iOS app:
Itâs indeed messy. I force blank lines in my comments with adding a line with â/â as a single character. I also tried to use formatting and links in my profile which displayed differently on different platforms.
I voted for this but it goes deeper, I think. Links are especially troublesome. If you press a link on the mobile platform, youâll see what I mean. As it is now, itâs a kludge.
A link on the mobile platform should not launch a browser. Instead the mobile app should load the linked observation with breadcrumbs.
Yeah, it would be very nice if linked observations opened in the app, though I guess if I linked a browser explore page search (which I do on occasion) that might be tougher since the app explore isnât as robust as the website.
I mostly use iNat on a browser so my main concern was not knowing whether my formatting was carrying over into the app. If anyone who uses the app more has text formatting concerns not mentioned, do chime in! I put in this feature request partly because it was mentioned in the recent product goals that the app UX was a high priority in the coming year.
Right, so let me expand on this use case a little bit. If you think this should be split off into a separate feature request, let me know.
Links from one observation to another require special handling. (There are certain observation fields that already do this, such as Similar Observation Set.) A special syntax is needed so that the platform can do the Right Thing.
An example where this has already been done is Wikipedia. To link from one article to another, the name of the article is surrounded by double square brackets. Such a link works equally well on the web or mobile.
Would there be a way of coding it so itâs recognized that âhey, this hyperlink goes to an iNat observation (and not, e.g. a journal page or something else not available on the app), so letâs keep the user within the app and not open it up in the browserâ? This already happens with @ mentions in the sense that if you click a mention (e.g. @jonsense) in a note/comment in the app, it takes you that personâs profile within the app and does not launch a new browser window. Iâm not a developer though, so I donât know if you could make observation links work the same way.
Sure, thereâs a way to do it (Wikipedia has figured it out) but itâs probably not helpful to be prescriptive at this point. Let me state the use case though:
Create a link to an observation in the web user interface such that the link does not launch a browser in the mobile interface.
The next step of course would involve a link to a list of observations (Explore) but I donât know how much of that interface is supported on the mobile platform.
My main concern with this feature request was getting the basic text formatting options consonant across platforms (so it would be small and âactionableâ). The issue with links to observations taking you out of the app wasnât on my radar, but itâs a good thing to bring up. I think it fits with (and am happy to have it discussed further on) this post, though you could always make a separate feature request if you think it would get more traction that way.
