I can take a look but it might not be necessary.

You only mention iPhone and iPad so I assume that Android users have no such problems.

If this is the case then I think the main question is what browser is being used? You say you can not replicate so what browser do you use and what browser do the people having problems use?

If the answer to the users with problems is Safari then the next question would be is their IOS version completely up to date?

Despite what Apple claim our pretty extensive experience with Safari (both in IOS and macOS) is that it is pretty awful. Yes – it is very fast but it’s JavaScript engine is deficient and quirky to say the least. I have no noticeable problems with the very latest IOS Safari (although I do not use it as my main browser) but have experienced lots of problems with previous IOS/Safari combinations. At one point not so long ago we even had code on SP that tested for Safari and suggested using a different browser is was so non-standard!

So if we can gather that data it might be most useful.

The issue occurs with users who are using iPhone/iPad in conjunction with Safari. I’ll ask and see if I can find out exactly what version of Safari they are using.

I also asked my hosting company and here is their reply:

If this behaviour is occurring on just iPhone / iPad, then it’s an iOS issue. Either iOS is blocking these particular resources, or they’re setup in a way incompatible with iOS (i.e. the wrong format), or the developers of Simple:Press have a bug on their hand that needs addressing.

I’ll keep you posted, but any more ideas or tips for addressing this would be much appreciated. 

It would be a useful diagnostic if those experiencing a problem could at least try another browser. Personally I use Chrome as my iPhone/iPad browser and experience no problems whatsoever.

I’m having the same issue with several of my members and was glad to find this thread – some member comments:

“Safari on MacBook Air will not let me type when I click on the reply to message (reply at top of message), but will on reply to thread (reply at top)”

“I can start a new topic, which I just did. When responding to a message I don’t get the prompt and cannot start typing. When I move to my windows computer I don’t seem to have the same problem.”

“It tries to open in Safari, and then I copy and Paste the links into Chrome. It worked fine with Chrome, but I don’t have Chrome installed on every machine I hope to use on the forum.”

So it specifically seems to be an Apple/Mac/IOS issue, and not just in relation to iPhones or iPads, as far as I can tell.

That said, I personally have an ancient iPhone 4, running IOS 7.1.2, and I could hit the reply button, get a prompt, type a reply, and hit save – no problem.

So it also seems related to a newer version of IOS.

What can I suggest to these folk to help them be able to type replies using Safari and the latest versions of IOS?

As I asked above – are your users MacOS/Safari and IOS/Safari completely up to date? My own views on Safari are well aired but things do seem to be working OK on the very latest versions- at least in my own tests using this site.

Perhaps add to that question regarding Simple:Press as well – are you using the latest of everything?

Just a thought..

Sorry but i do not own an iPhone or iPad. But possibly consider these scenarios.

Anyone using a caching plugin? If so have you excluded the forum page?

CloudFlare, I love it – but it’s Rocket Loader feature will break lots of SP JavaScript. Using a page rule to turn off RL on the forum page does not work. RL must be turned off for the domain.

One member has confirmed: “Latest versions on both MacBook Airs, iPhone 7 & both iPad minis.”

Simplepress and its plugins, as well as WordPress and its plugins, are all up to date.

Well I am posting this using Safari/macOS so this is not a common problem.

So maybe you do actually have some other plugin (or WP theme) running a script that is causing a conflict specific to Safari…. That would be a logical explanation.

How do I determine if that’s the case?  Should I provide you with wp-admin access to take a look? Or should I list the plugins I have installed? (12, one of which is Simplepress)

Access to the list is almost certainly not going to help much. There are thousands of plugins and between us we are only familiar with a small handful! 

Plus mobile browsers are next to useless as far as development tools are concerned. So no console to look at.

Thew first thing I would try would be to add the ‘Develop’ menu to Safari on a Mac – and then change the user agent to iPhone/1OS10 – and then try the operation to see if it fails. If it fails as it would on an iphone then you can look in the script console for errors. The console in Safari is not great bit it is all we have.

The other, less techie method, is to deactivate all WP plugins (except SP) – clear browser caches – try the operation. If it works then reactivate other plugins one at a time repeating the clear and test between each one.

I took your suggestions to my website developer (as they were out of my scope of knowledge/skills), and here’s what he reported back with:

Hold on a minute…! That function is actually a tinyMCE function that is showing the error. Safari clearly has not loaded the TM scripts yet.

However a question… That SP function is specific to the Threading plugin which uses the ‘reply’ button within each, individual post – as opposed to the Add/Reply button at the bottom of a post listing.

I have been working on the assumption that we have been talking about the latter but are we really talking about the threading reply button here? And does the main reply button and editor work OK?

Those are good questions – I’m not sure the members differentiate between threading and reply, so let me get you more information on that. Stay tuned!

Will do.