The latest version of Democratic Underground, aka DU4, is now open for early access beta testing!

[EarlG]

120. Hey, to respond to both posts

I figured the nav links at the bottom of the page were no longer necessary on DU4 because the new page header, which includes the navigation menus, is pinned to the top of the page at all times, so you can simply click that and get to where you want to go.

HOWEVER... I think there's an oversight on my part here, because if you're using Skinner Mode the nav bar *isn't* pinned to the top of the page. I'll have a think about this and see what I can do.

As for the long links, this was a deliberate choice. On the mobile version of DU3 links are shortened, which works well when someone just posts a link as you did above. The reason we did this is because back when DU3 was created 12 or so years ago, I don't think there was an easy way to break a long link across multiple lines. This resulted in a situation where very long links would force themselves out of the right side of the page. This was obviously a particular problem on mobile. So we used a trick to shorten the links instead.

However, if someone makes a bunch of text in the middle of their post into a hyperlink, the shortener would still kick in. So on DU3 mobile, you'd get this:

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis ... No candidate came into the debate facing more pressure than DeSantis. For weeks, his poll numbers have been sliding and the gap with Trump widening, jeopardizing his argument that he is voters' preferred alternative to Trump.

It can often mess up the context of the post for people reading on mobile. But on DU4 mobile, without the shortener, you get this:

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis stood at center stage, but he wasn’t at the center of the evening. No candidate came into the debate facing more pressure than DeSantis. For weeks, his poll numbers have been sliding and the gap with Trump widening, jeopardizing his argument that he is voters' preferred alternative to Trump.

So now that we can break long links across lines, on DU4 I opted to remove the shortener. Yes, this sometimes means that very long links will be posted -- but they don't break the page layout any more, and I think the fact that text in posts is no longer shortened makes up for it.