Performance Drop
On my iPhone 4, within a thread, it's as if the iPhone itself has become much less responsive. As best I can tell, this is specifically within a thread. On the Subscriptions page, and within a forum listing I don't think these behaviors are seen. But reading a thread, the iPhone is abnormally unresponsive to touch interaction. This is something that began recently. I've had my iPhone since July. As this thread shows, this performance problem started in mid November. Tonight, it seemed noticeably worse than normal, browsing the "Movies you Detest" thread. Normally, it's annoying but manageable. But tonight, it rendered the forum nearly unusable to me.
This is specific to HTF. I've not seen this on any other website I browse.
Normally, the iPhone responds quickly to all touch actions. Double-tapping text to auto-zoom for best readability, instead of responding immediately may take a noticeable fraction of a second. Or it may not respond at all. It may take several attempts to effect the zoom.
Two-fingered pinch / stretch is a manual zoom. This is unresponsive. Nothing may happen at first, and then it will zoom with a jutter, not keeping up with the touch gestures.
Two-fingered drag, to scroll the page, also may do nothing at first. Sometimes multiple tries are required. When it does scroll, it can take a fraction of a second and then jump to a new scroll position. It's not smooth as normal.
Touch-and-hold selection: Cursor control is done by pressing and holding until a magnifying glass appears that lets you move a cursor precisely within text. Even this feels slower, lurchier with an HTF thread.
Reply Box
This is a secondary matter. The reply box is ill-suited for the iPhone, and I've heard, the iPad. It doesn't size itself to the iphone screen, so typing a line into it spans over two iPhone screen widths. The effect is that the screen is almost constantly in motion as it jumps to the right as you type and the lurches back the lower left when you line-wrap. Other forums have a similar problem, but it seems worst in HTF's current layout.
The Submit button is relatively far away from the box, which requires scrolling off to hit it. And with the current unresponsiveness of HTF, is much slower than you want for something as simple as tapping a submit button.
There are also various editing, formatting, and interaction quirks that are hard to describe, but easily seen with a few minutes of interaction with a Mobile Safari.
My impression is this isn't specific to me and my iPhone: I suggest having someone at HTF or Huddler with an iPhone to show you around HTF's behavior with it.
