I tried to view a Discourse forum on my phone yesterday, but all I got was the splash screen.

[volpeon@icy.wyvern.rip]

I tried to view a Discourse forum on my phone yesterday, but all I got was the splash screen. I don't know why this software is so popular and how they still haven't fixed this problem which has plagued it since forever.

[volpeon@icy.wyvern.rip]

What's funny is that Discourse serves static HTML and I can view it with JS disabled. Why even add this stupid splash screen that blocks the view?

[Guest]

@volpeon I think we read a thing once that said Google had a bullshit metric that praised your site if it changed as much of the screen as possible at the earliest opportunity ("largest contentful paint" or something), and that's why those splash screens are /everywhere/ on the internet now.

So I'd say blame both Google for the metric and the forum software devs for trying to optimize for it at the expense of usability.

[Guest]

@volpeon even with javascript that splash scrrrn is annoying

[Guest]

@volpeon pretty sure the static HTML version is extremely bare-bones, the actual UI is entirely client-side JS

[volpeon@icy.wyvern.rip]

@lambda Sure, but what's stopping them from showing the static UI and instantly replacing it with the JS version once that's ready? Why assume the JS will work when it isn't loaded yewt and make the static UI unusable with a splash screen?

[volpeon@icy.wyvern.rip]

@tay I have never encountered a website that made me go "thank god this splash screen was there or I would've left instantly" — more like the contrary. ​​

[Guest]

@volpeon probably the fact that the JS takes several seconds to load on a good day, which would change the entire UI when the user is already in the middle of using it

[volpeon@icy.wyvern.rip]

@lambda It's almost as if other forum softwares which deliver a full-featured static version and only use JS to improve the usability found the better solution to this problem