Fluid View Sidebar needs work

[KT Walrus]

I'm experimenting with the new Fluid View. I have forums that are 4 levels deep with hundreds of forums total.

The sidebar widget would work much better if the subforums are only shown if the parent forum is selected. I have 6 root categories each with an average of 4 or 5 subforums in each root category. Each subforum has zero to ten subforums. Some of these subforums have a few subforums themselves. With all forums visible, the sidebar is very long and hard to read. It would be better to unhide children subforums when the parent forum is checked and hide the children when the parent forum is unchecked.

[Rikki]

We don't really intend for fluid view to be used where your configuration is pretty complex. In fact, I believe we've added a note on the settings page to this effect. It's definitely something that shines better with just a handful of forums - it won't be for every site.

[Morgin]

1 hour ago, Rikki said:

We don't really intend for fluid view to be used where your configuration is pretty complex. In fact, I believe we've added a note on the settings page to this effect. It's definitely something that shines better with just a handful of forums - it won't be for every site.

While you may not have intended it that way, it does actually work quite well even with lots of forums. Maybe this could be revisited in a future version as I think I agree that a slightly more user friendly filter menu would make this a lot more powerful.

[jair101]

A collapse/expand button for the categories can help a lot in similar cases.

[KT Walrus]

On 5/25/2017 at 8:49 PM, Rikki said:

We don't really intend for fluid view to be used where your configuration is pretty complex. In fact, I believe we've added a note on the settings page to this effect. It's definitely something that shines better with just a handful of forums - it won't be for every site.

I think that collapse/expand for nested forums is not a "complex" requirement for the FV Sidebar widget. It wouldn't even be that hard to implement since the widget already propagates a parent's selection status to it's children. All that I think is needed is to check the depth of the children and hide/unhide them based on the parent's checkbox state.

This small change would make the Fluid View much better for sites with 3 or more levels of forums and more than 25 forums total. Of course, the current widget works best for the IPS site since you only have 2 levels of forums, but hide/unhide levels greater than 2 would not affect the IPS Site but would make Fluid View a much better option for my site (and I suspect other sites as well).

[Charles]

As Rikki pointed out, if you have a complex, hierarchal format on your site then Fluid View may not be the best choice for your community. We are wary to complicate what is designed to be a simpler mode of browsing.

This is why we give things options though. Not every feature is for every site

[TheWorldNewsMedia.org]

Obviously a large percentage like the new sidebar...  and what many others (with large forums) are saying is:

WE TOO would like a sidebar that functions well AND we need one with nested subforums.

Maybe there should be a choice of sidebar types?

Maybe one where one could select a parent forum without simultaneously selecting every child forum?

Food for thought.

Choice is always nice.

[KT Walrus]

4 hours ago, Charles said:

This is why we give things options though. Not every feature is for every site

I completely fail to understand why you wouldn't add this simple request. Hide/show level 3 and deeper forums in the sidebar. It seems so obvious to me that this is a good idea and doesn't change the sidebar at all on this site (only for sites with 3 or more levels of forums).

Another simpler alternative might be to allow the admin to set the max depth for this sidebar. The max depth is currently hardcoded to 5, but if I could set it to 2, it might work for my site. It wouldn't be as functional as a Hide/Show sidebar, but at least the sidebar wouldn't be so huge and ugly. Not sure how it would work if the user clicked on a forum link in the list where the forum was at a depth greater than the max depth setting.

Still, I'm pushing for a Hide/show for deeper than 2 levels...

[AlexWebsites]

Is there a way or can you add the ability to not show blocks when in fluid view? I do have a lot of forums and find this view is very good for members that want to see a list of all the topics and a quick feed of specific forums but any sidebar contents I add to the regular forum view show up also in fluid view extending the page. I would just add an option to not show added side blocks.

[AlexWebsites]

Just to follow up, would be great if fluid view had its own controller class so you can hide the sidebar blocks with  css. I was trying to see if there was a way to differentiate between the two views and just hide the side bar blocks because they extend the page so much in that view. Otherwise each block should have some sort of setting or a master setting to show or not show extra blocks in fluid view.

<body class="ipsApp ipsApp_front ipsJS_has ipsClearfix" data-controller="core.front.core.app,core.front.widgets.manager" data-message data-pageApp="forums" data-pageLocation="front" data-pageModule="forums" data-pageController="index">