Is this what you are referring to?
If so, that is normal and expected. There are three different ways to reply on the forum:
- Reply to a specific post
- Reply to the topic as a whole
- Reply by starting a new topic
- Reply as a direct message
The element at the top left hand corner of the post composer indicates which type of reply you will be making. If you click on that, it gives you the option to change the reply type.
Not all reply types are always available. In the screencast above, I opened the post composer by clicking the reply icon under post #1 of this topic, but the composer was configured for "Reply to the topic as a whole":
The reason for this is because I was relying to post #1 of the topic. Replying to that post will always be treated as replying to the entire topic. This why when I clicked on that element at the top left hand corner of the post composer, the menu that opened only gave me the "Reply as linked topic" option:
If I instead clicked the reply icon under post #2, then it instead defaults to the "Reply to a specific post" type of reply:
And if I go to configure a different reply type, I will now see multiple options on the menu:
But really you don't need to worry about any of this because the default reply type selected by the forum software will be the correct one most of the time. Just write your reply and click the "Reply" button at the bottom right hand corner of the post composer and you should be good to go. Avoid clicking the element at the top left hand corner because then this reply type configuration menu will open that seems to be distracting you.
The "Reply as linked topic" option can be useful in the specific case where you want to discuss something raised in the topic, but you know your discussion is going to be completely tangential and not useful to the person who started the original topic. However, the need for doing this is fairly rare, so not a feature you're likely to use frequently.
There was a significant redesign of the forum post composer two months ago:
That change might trip up someone returning to the forum after an absence that started before that change, but I'm sure you have made many replies since that time, so I'm guessing you already find the new design familiar.
I'm not able to reproduce this. Unfortunately I don't own a tablet capable of using the forum, but I did try on my Android phone, and it worked there just as well as on my PC.
Are you able to reproduce the problem on your laptop if you reduce the width of the browser window you have the forum open in to the absolute minimum? The forum does have a special "mobile view" layout, but this is actually just based on the viewport width (not on device). So we can actually trigger the same layout even on a PC by simply reducing the browser window width small enough to trigger the layout switch.
Are you using the forum in a browser on your tablet, or are you using an app? I seem to remember that I used to have an "Arduino Forum" app on my phone (something the browser offered, not app from the Google Play store), but I removed that at some point and now I don't see it offered. So I only checked with Arduino Forum in the browser on my phone.