Fixed Keyboard not appearing on editor on Android 4.2.2

[RobinHood]

Affected version

2.0.2

I have a user who can't reply to posts as the keyboard doesn't pop up when he selects the editor. Works fine in the chatbox and for status updates.

He's on Android 4.2.2, using the 'Internet' app, which at first he told me was Internet Explorer until I asked him to send me a screen shot to clarify

I believe it's just the default android browser, says he hasn't installed a second one.

had to keep pressing the box to make it blue
If i tap it goes blue and back to grey
No popup

 

[RobinHood]

Tested with all add ons disabled, and with the default style and still the same issue.

Also, the media gallery widget seems to get rather stretchy.

I asked and his phone is a Samsung Note 2, and it seems there's no further Android updates available from Samsung for it.

 

[RobinHood]

I asked him if he was willing to upgrade his phone, he said the Note 8 costs 1000 euro and he still gets 3-4 days battery life with this phone. Now I want to switch to a Note 2 just for the battery life.

He did preorder the Note 7, but they started blowing up of course. I may be able to talk him into give the Note 8, he's addicted to the S-Pen, so it sounds like it has to be a Note upgrade if Android 4.2.2 is out of the window.

 

[Chris D]

The root cause here is that Froala doesn't support Android 4.2. This was released 5-6 years ago and certainly doesn't hold any significant market share anymore so support (with Froala, and XF in general) on that browser isn't really feasible at this stage.

What we can do is at least make sure the poor guy can post, and we can do that by disabling the rich text editor. Froala recently revised their browser support to exclude iOS versions below 8.4 and Android versions below 6.

So the change we'll be making in the next XF release is to edit src/XF/Template/Templater.php and find this:

if (preg_match('#android (\d+)\.#i', $ua, $match) && intval($match[1]) < 4)

And replace with:

if (preg_match('#android (\d+)\.#i', $ua, $match) && intval($match[1]) < 6)

That should allow him to post, at least. It would be good if you can confirm that.

Additionally, there may be something else which will help this and other issues he may be experiencing -- Google Chrome. I believe this is compatible with Android 4.1 and above. It may be the case that Chrome will solve the editor problem and the media gallery stretchiness problem (and no doubt a whole ream of other things we have fallbacks for in old browsers).

 

[RobinHood]

Chris, you beautiful man. You saved my friend 1000 euro and potentially thousands of other people money by allowing them to continue to run a crappy old outdated phone OS.

First of all the Chrome browser tip worked a treat, fixed both the editor and the widget issues (and is now his default)

I then applied your patch and had him test the old browser again and that also worked.

Weirdly he did get an error with the first test, which popped up when he tapped the editor.



Google seems to think that when you translate it from Dutch it says

no safe connection to the beach can be made

Which sounds like a bad review for a Danny Boyle movie starring Leonardo Dicaprio.

But I'm assured what it actually says is:

Connection problem
Cant establish a safe connection.

I'm running SSL, so not sure why it popped up.

After attempting to create a brand new thread (success) and replying to another thread (success) we never saw it again, so hopefully just a one off, and it works in the native Android Browser!

Boss support as always

 

[Chris D]

Yeah not sure why the SSL error cropped up tbh but if that was the last time of seeing it, I wouldn't worry too much. I'd probably encourage the guy to use Chrome if he can. It's like a choice between running IE7 and Edge - should be no contest really (incidentally, he may want to look at Edge or even Firefox as they should similarly solve the issues, providing they support versions of Android that old).

But glad that sorted.

We'll call this fixed (by way of disabling the editor on ancient Android).

 

[RobinHood]

I'd probably encourage the guy to use Chrome if he can

Absolutely, it's his default phone browser now. I'll continue to drag him kicking and screaming into the 21st century as fast as I can in order to up the percentage of users in your analytics on newer systems so you can design fancy new feature that use the latest standards

 

[DragonByte Tech]

I'm pretty sure I have a Nokia 3310 laying around somewhere... WILL IT POST!?


Fillip

 

[RobinHood]

WILL IT POST!?

I think you've just come up with a great new YouTube channel to compete with Will it Blend!

 

[RobinHood]

Yet more proof, to anyone who disbelieves that porn drives all tech forward

Godspeed XF Team...



Bloody end users....what a bunch of *******s