Talk:Mobile design/Wikipedia navigation/Back behavior

Comments

I haven't had a chance to go through every scenario in detail, but here are some initial thoughts:

• Articles and sections: Our section expand functionality is very similar to the "show more" functionality whereby additional information loads. Typically, the back button doesn't reverse the "show more" action. In these cases, the back button typically goes to the previous page. For an example of this, check out customer reviews on the mobile web version of the Amazon site. You can tap the (+) button to view more of a particular customer review. Tapping back goes to the previous page instead of reversing the "show more."
  • Yes, agreed, but we recently encountered feedback where users wanted to step back through sections. Jon tried this as a general change on the mobile site. I agree the normal behavior is to go back to the previous article. it is a valid point on mobile, though, that the sections are almost like pages, especially when a click leads to a section. --Pchang (talk) 22:52, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
• Menus and submenus: I think we should look at the mobile web version of Facebook -- their back behavior seems sensible. The two states seem to be:
  • Menu is open (partially obscuring the main content): in this case, back seems to simply close the Menu
  • Menu is closed: in this case, back seems to go back through the main content. For example (main content identified by numbers), View Newsfeed (1) --> Menu --> Select Messages --> View messages (2) --> Back. In this case, Back would go to the Newsfeed (1). I don't know how long the history is kept for (e.g. at some point, you end up at the website you visited before going to facebook), but this seems to be the general behavior.

Facebook is just an example -- their back behavior seems sensible, but it's not the only approach. I do, however, think that having "back" take the user from a given sub menu to a different submenu (e.g., view article --> tap menu --> view contact us --> tap "back" --> article) is a bit odd. What do others think? Howief (talk) 23:38, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

• • • Sorry, did you mean "take the user from a given submenu to the article?