When I click on the “The Straight Dope Message Board” header on my phone, I go to a page where I see a list of categories, and each one has a couple of topics listed underneath it.
When I do the same on my laptop, I get a page with the categories in a list on the left, and a list of random recent topics on the right – where, confusingingly, they sorta look like they line up with the categories but actually seem to be listed in order of last edit (I think) and have nothing whatsoever to do with the categories.
I prefer the first. Is there any way to get to it (or something like it) on a laptop?
Note - if you play around with this and your desktop ends up stuck in mobile mode, you can get back the normal desktop view by clicking on the hamburger menu (the three bars on the top right) then click on Desktop View at the bottom of that.
I actually need to stay “stuck” in mobile mod if I want to be able to get back the list I like without a lot of hassle. I’m playing around to see how long I can get it to stay stuck that way.
So far, I’m not noticing any major downsides, by the way. I suppose I miss the preview of a post, but the screen looks cleaner without it. So that’s got both plusses and minuses.