Can we get the old style "View New Content" button back?

[openfire]

6 hours ago, Kjell Iver Johansen said:

Behind each and every admin there literally hundreds of people complaining, or people just leaving. I saw on another forum there was 40 pages of complaints - and on my supporttopic theres 15 pages. Not all posts complaining - but I tell you that I've got only one single member telling me that he like the Activity stream.One person! More importantly for me - I lost several members that posted a lot - but now have left for good because of the missing functionality.

What missing functionality? Before we got a quick look at whats had happened on the site by just clicking VNC - no more - no less.

 One person actually called me up on my phone saying that he like the new look, but on every forumsoftware he use - he check VNC. He also hated this Activity stream, but as an admin - what can we really say or do?

I have s second site still on 348, and I just have to "brace for impact" if I upgrade...

To the OP - for me a lifesaver has been the Whoarewe plugin. It has some small bugs, but after all - when I started using that - people stopped complaining.

Thanks for this post. You just sold me on that plugin!

 

6 hours ago, John_C said:

Thanks. I'll look in to that! 

And fwiw.... Any modders out there willing to make a VNC button as a hook will make some cash. I wish I was a software engineer because I'd do it.  

I was just thinking the exact same thing, then viola, I read your post.

[John_C]

12 hours ago, openfire said:

Thanks for this post. You just sold me on that plugin!

 

I was just thinking the exact same thing, then viola, I read your post.

It was a long night for me. :lol:

[openfire]

l'm actually pretty surprised that nobody has made a mod for this yet... Clearly the demand is there. I know I would definitely buy it.

I would contact @stoo2000 ... A plugin like this would be right up his ally:

He's a solid dev, I've bought from him before, no problems at all.

[Kjell Iver Johansen]

10 hours ago, openfire said:

l'm actually pretty surprised that nobody has made a mod for this yet... Clearly the demand is there. I know I would definitely buy it

It was part of the core in 4.0.x series - so it should be possible to pull out the stuff needed from an old installation..  

Certainly a button - Use default VNC - in ACP should have been a part of the core now also. 

[Koby]

I'd actually like to see the Activity Stream corrected. For example I'm tired of seeing it say soandso posted a blog entry; when in reality it's simply that someone commented on it. It incorrectly states what the actual activity is/was and therefore incorrectly mentions the wrong user that caused the activity.

I'd also like to see pagination return as a option besides just the 'load more' button. It's funny how the 'load more' feature was removed from thread list view, but was added to activity streams. Consequently I'd like to see the 'load more' feature return as an option on thread listings too.

[chilihead]

Agreed!

It's in the tracker a couple times, here's one where Matt assigned himself to it so hoping that gets fixed soon!

I'm also hoping this gets addressed:

And yes, some sort of pagination/return to place in stream.

[Lindy]

Yes, that appears to be a bug. 

Regarding pagination - we are looking at various solutions and ideas that mostly revolve around improving the stream so you wouldn't require pagination to begin with. As users we all tend to get fixated on what we want without stepping back and evaluating why we really want it. For example, some wanted it because they couldn't use their back button in the stream to return to the position they were on. Before breaking the underlying purpose of the stream to begin with, we'd like to gather further feedback. So, no action on that at this time, but it's important we understand what your objective is.

[eGullet]

On 12/13/2015 at 3:33 AM, openfire said:

l'm actually pretty surprised that nobody has made a mod for this yet... Clearly the demand is there. I know I would definitely buy it.

If by "this" you mean "gimme my VNC!" then I'd say that you can achieve VNC in the current 4.1.5.2 system with one mod and two manual changes: 

• The mod: DawPi's "Collapsed Stream" plugin defaults all streams to collapsed view.
• Use the ACP to create a stream called "View New Content" with "Content Only", plus whatever other settings you wanted.
• Modify the template in core->front->system->searchResult, line 26, to return first unread:

  <a href='{$objectUrl->stripQueryString( array( 'comment' => 'comment', 'review' => 'review' ) )->setQueryString( 'do', 'getNewComment' )}' title='{lang="first_unread_post"}' data-ipsTooltip>
  

  Once that's done, you'll have a very close facsimile of VNC. You will also be able to roll back the first and third of those changes when Invision releases their updates to the streams.

[chilihead]

2 hours ago, Lindy said:

Regarding pagination -

In 3.4 forum view at the bottom of topics, you could click "Load more topics" and they loaded vertically like a stream, and the pagination would change from 1 to 2 and so on with each new load.

That could easily work in the streams, imo.

Then when you click out to read you return to where you were if you use the back button.

You could also have something like "Return to stream" in the content navigation, so if you came from the stream and not the forum, instead of saying:
< GO TO TOPIC LISTING
it says:
< RETURN TO STREAM
in the footer nav, and it saves your place (or last page/load) to return to.

Both of these could be added and solves navigation and place holding.

[John_C]

5 hours ago, eGullet said:

If by "this" you mean "gimme my VNC!" then I'd say that you can achieve VNC in the current 4.1.5.2 system with one mod and two manual changes: 

• The mod: DawPi's "Collapsed Stream" plugin defaults all streams to collapsed view.
• Use the ACP to create a stream called "View New Content" with "Content Only", plus whatever other settings you wanted.
• Modify the template in core->front->system->searchResult, line 26, to return first unread:

  
  <a href='{$objectUrl->stripQueryString( array( 'comment' => 'comment', 'review' => 'review' ) )->setQueryString( 'do', 'getNewComment' )}' title='{lang="first_unread_post"}' data-ipsTooltip>

  Once that's done, you'll have a very close facsimile of VNC. You will also be able to roll back the first and third of those changes when Invision releases their updates to the streams.

That's interesting. Might give it a shot. 

[NewRockRabbit]

14 hours ago, Lindy said:

Regarding pagination - we are looking at various solutions and ideas that mostly revolve around improving the stream so you wouldn't require pagination to begin with. As users we all tend to get fixated on what we want without stepping back and evaluating why we really want it. For example, some wanted it because they couldn't use their back button in the stream to return to the position they were on. Before breaking the underlying purpose of the stream to begin with, we'd like to gather further feedback. So, no action on that at this time, but it's important we understand what your objective is.

The 'objective' is for the Stream to be more than attractively displayed content but to be a functioning tool to find AND read that content. At present as soon as you want to go beyond the first 'page' of 25 entries you lose the ability to move easily between the Stream and the underlying content (ie using the back button to get back to the point you left the Stream).

I'm surprised that this still appears to be in any way a 'controversial' request. Rather I see it as basic functionality.

[Joel R]

15 hours ago, eGullet said:

If by "this" you mean "gimme my VNC!" then I'd say that you can achieve VNC in the current 4.1.5.2 system with one mod and two manual changes: 

• The mod: DawPi's "Collapsed Stream" plugin defaults all streams to collapsed view.
• Use the ACP to create a stream called "View New Content" with "Content Only", plus whatever other settings you wanted.
• Modify the template in core->front->system->searchResult, line 26, to return first unread:

  
  <a href='{$objectUrl->stripQueryString( array( 'comment' => 'comment', 'review' => 'review' ) )->setQueryString( 'do', 'getNewComment' )}' title='{lang="first_unread_post"}' data-ipsTooltip>

  Once that's done, you'll have a very close facsimile of VNC. You will also be able to roll back the first and third of those changes when Invision releases their updates to the streams.

Suggested that this be broken out into its own community guide! 

[chilihead]

On 12/17/2015 at 0:20 AM, Lindy said:

Yes, that appears to be a bug. 

Regarding pagination - we are looking at various solutions and ideas that mostly revolve around improving the stream so you wouldn't require pagination to begin with. As users we all tend to get fixated on what we want without stepping back and evaluating why we really want it. For example, some wanted it because they couldn't use their back button in the stream to return to the position they were on. Before breaking the underlying purpose of the stream to begin with, we'd like to gather further feedback. So, no action on that at this time, but it's important we understand what your objective is.

If we could at least get the back button to work after the stream loads more, it would be a major improvement.

Example:

In stream, click to read post.
Click back button, you are at the same place you left.

It already does this, until you "Load more activity."

In stream, click to read post.
Click back, shoots you to the very top of the stream! Can this at least work so we can return? Pagination is one thing but losing your place is a huge issue imo. I tend to do a lot of reading w/o posting and it gets really frustrating after you load more. Especially when it's easy to load results 4 or 5 times or more.

Or some return to stream icon or something (basically a back button but the software saves your place since the browser doesn't).

Thanks

[Lindy]

We've not closed the door on that - we're still discussing solutions and agree it could be better. 

[Koby]

I just always right click the circles on the left and select open in new tab. It's how I utilize the AS to view new content and continue to browse the AS without losing my spot. I actually think the pagination suggestion I brought up would actually solve the issue of losing your place in the event of using the browser back button. It'd work the same way as it currently does in that it'd have both the 'load more' and the pagination working together like topic view did on 3.4.x (which I still don't understand why this was removed in 4.1.x thread list view.

[NewRockRabbit]

5 hours ago, Lindy said:

We've not closed the door on that - we're still discussing solutions and agree it could be better. 

Good news!

One impact of this is that when I use AS to find new content I generally only look at the latest 25 items of new content and thus reply / comment less than I used to. Maybe this is a good thing for everyone else , but if this is being replicated across other users, the result will be significantly lower forum activity.

The simplest solution appears to be some form of load more / pagination as Koby describes above - simple is good.