MetaFilter FAQ

See here for details on this problem.
(tags: html preview bug display ) December 10, 2012 - permalink - back to questions

There are a few things you should try before contacting the mods or reporting a bug in MetaTalk.

1. Clear your cache and do a hard refresh. Here are Wikipedia's instructions on how to do this with various browsers.
2. Log out and log back in again.
3. See if the problem persists across multiple computers and/or internet connections and/or browsers if you can.
4. Check to see if you are running browser extensions that may interfere with site features. Try disabling them.
5. Make sure you are allowing googleapis.com and cloudfront.net to run scripts on the site. [Why?]
6. Check to see if you are in Private Browsing mode, which can sometimes cause weird site behaviors.

If none of these have any effect, feel free to contact us via the Contact Form. Post a bug report to MetaTalk if you feel the problem is one that may affect many users.
(tags: techsupport metatalk bug display error troubleshooting ) January 14, 2011 - permalink - back to questions

Your Site Preferences let you choose Modern, Classic, or Plain theme. Modern theme has a white background, but colored backgrounds are available by clicking Dark Mode on the front page. Classic theme has colored backgrounds and Plain theme is white background variant of Classic.

Modern theme is responsive, that is, it will automatically resize on various devices. In Classic or Plain theme, you can choose to switch between standard and mobile versions of the site—for information about switching between mobile and standard views, see this FAQ entry.

Classic and Plain theme allow you to customize the size and font of different text types. You can use any font that's installed in your computer, just enter the name. (If a font name isn't working, try copying the exact name of the font as it appears in your computer's Fonts folder or library.) You can set the fonts to be bigger or smaller, and you can set any font size to 0 (zero) to remove that text from the display. The defaults of Plain and Classic theme are these, in case you want to return to them after changing: Body Font - Verdana; Body Font Size - 10; Byline Font - Verdana; Byline Font Size - 8; Title Font - Arial; Title Font Size - 14.

When you click Save on your site preferences page, the display settings you chose are saved as cookies to your browser. That means you can have different display settings for different browsers. For example, you might use Classic theme on your home computer, but Modern theme on your phone. Keep in mind that adjusting your display settings will change them for the browser you are currently using, but not other browsers. So if you want to update a particular display setting across all of the browsers you use, you'll need to re-save your display preferences on each of them. Be aware that saving your display preferences will make those settings the default choices next time you load the preferences page.
(tags: display preferences fonts titles text defaults color theme cookies mobile ) January 10, 2012 - permalink - back to questions

The modern theme, which has been the default since 2014, switches layouts dynamically based on screen size.

Normally if you are browsing from a phone or other small screen in the Classic theme, the mobile view of the site should come up automatically. If it doesn't, you can go to mobile.metafilter.com to tell the site you want the mobile view for this device.

Once you're seeing the mobile view, you can switch back to the standard view by clicking the "Switch to Standard Site" link at the bottom of any page.
(tags: mobile cellphone phone smartphone smallscreen site tablet display preferences views ) March 6, 2013 - permalink - back to questions