Direct topic title links to first unread post by default

[rllmukforum]

Apologies if already suggested, I searched and could not find it specifically.

Request:

Change all topic title links such that they include the getNewComment parameter. This is the default behavior while browsing from the main site index, but not while in a forum/sub forum.

Justification:

When the Forum app had separate desktop and mobile themes, the mobile theme had this very functionality. Rather than requiring users to click the little dot/star alongside a thread, you could click the thread title to see the first unread reply. 

I no longer run analytics, but even as of a few years ago, half of my users are on mobile devices. We manually edit themes to include getNewComment, but I would prefer to perform as little customization as possible. 

If, for some reason, a user wants to return to the first page, the forum already includes a link to page 1 under the topic title.

I believe this would, technically, allow you to remove the dot/star, which cleans up the UI slightly.

It feels like a good quality of life improvement for mobile use, much like the recent new features added in 4.3. 

[Day_]

This is my biggest annoyance with the software, and something I have posted on numerous occasions but the powers that be do not seem interested unfortunately. 

Apparently some people prefer to start on page 1 every time they open a thread, I can only assume they have never completed reading a book! 🤷🏻‍♂️

Like you I have to edit templates for to avoid the zooming for the dot. Bonkers but that’s how it is.

[opentype]

While I’m not against the change, I feel like it’s asking to fix symptoms of an illness and not the illness itself. When people are opening individual forums to read on already opened posts, it feels like this is unnecessary cumbersome—especially on mobile. Personally, I never do that. I use the activity feeds only, because I can see everything at a glance and I don’t have to explore individual forums one by one. And I make sure my activity feeds are very prominent on the site, so my users also go with them. 

[Joel R]

There's a Marketplace plugin that will allow you to achieve what you want. 

[Day_]

Feels like half the time suggestions are made these days they are responded with there’s a plugin for that. 

I’m sure there is, but does that mean it shouldn’t be considered by the developers to be included out the box?

For what it’s worth both myself and the OP have stated we have made template changes for this behaviour so a plugin isn’t required.

It’s not a wild suggestion either as it works this way on other software, saying that I’ve not looked at vBulletin for years now since they sold up and it turned into donkey poo. 

Yes streams have this behaviour but not all users enjoy using streams, no matter how prominent you make them, in many cases I don’t use them either as even on this board they can be slow to open. 

Why introduce fluid view also if streams are the way to navigate these days? I personally find fluid view is actually better than streams on certain boards including this one, tick off the boards I’m not interested and away I go. 

Give users the choice, you don’t have to make the change global for everyone, make it a user setting that I and other users can enable on Invision Power boards we visit. 

[Joel R]

9 minutes ago, day_ said:

Feels like half the time suggestions are made these days they are responded with there’s a plugin for that. 

Yo @day_ Pretty sure there's a plugin for a suggestion box in the Marketplace too!  LOL  

The reason why I think it's still useful for people to share third-party apps and plugins in the Marketplace for feedback topics is because it gives an option to community admins to immediately address their concern.  Marketplace plugins are immediately available, and they can be costed and analyzed right away.  It doesn't lessen or replace Invision's review of the suggestion, and it's not a replacement for an official IPS solution or response, but it does give admins the opportunity to assess all of their options right now whether first party or third party.

[Day_]

8 minutes ago, Joel R said:

Yo @day_ Pretty sure there's a plugin for a suggestion box in the Marketplace too!  LOL  

The reason why I think it's still useful for people to share third-party apps and plugins in the Marketplace for feedback topics is because it gives an option to community admins to immediately address their concern.  Marketplace plugins are immediately available, and they can be costed and analyzed right away.  It doesn't lessen or replace Invision's review of the suggestion, and it's not a replacement for an official IPS solution or response, but it does give admins the opportunity to assess all of their options right now whether first party or third party.

I’ll let you off this time. Just a bit frustrated that’s all.

They brought a tagging system where some topics were tagged planned, not planned etc. Great idea it was, sadly didn’t last long, few got tagged and that was that.

I don’t expect developers to respond to each and every suggestion, or that every suggestion should be included, but it does feel like this board now is nothing more but a place for third party plugin developers to jump on you and sell their wares, once the OP has been satisfied the topic drops down the page and that’s that.

I’m not out to put these guys out of business, they are needed, but I’d just like a bit more interaction I guess from IPS. 

Even the bug tracker has been pulled now leaving us in the dark, I always feel guilty opening tickets in the client area over possible bugs, asking myself would someone already have reported this or not, I don’t want to be the 100th person of the day to say “this ain’t working”.

Online list? That’s gone as well, you may not see who’s online on this board.

It’s all becoming a bit hidden, secretive and I don’t like it.

Is there a male menopause? I might be at that age now, I’m off for a lie down.

 

[Day_]

This is the plugin by the way 

3 years ago I downloaded it and left this review.

Funny as I do remember installing it now, my board ran into issues later and removed plugins to see if this fixed my problem. It did, this is when I had to start looking through the templates myself to figure out how it worked and made the template changes since.

One of the main problems with plugins, compatibility issues with other plugins.

[Pete T]

12 hours ago, day_ said:

This is the plugin by the way 

3 years ago I downloaded it and left this review.

Funny as I do remember installing it now, my board ran into issues later and removed plugins to see if this fixed my problem. It did, this is when I had to start looking through the templates myself to figure out how it worked and made the template changes since.

One of the main problems with plugins, compatibility issues with other plugins.

The issues is normal down to amount hooks points us developers have to use to make a item load/show and if more then one uses same hook point problem start happend or worst a developer has chosen to change the template to fit there needs or even a theme builder. But back on point i see that asking IPS make more items out the box ? if i am correct then issues is not ever community wants the same out the box function or IPS might feel its not required function to spend the time to build, this why we third party developers are need.

As for my plugin highlighted caused a problem did work out how to solve the problem ? 

[rllmukforum]

22 hours ago, opentype said:

While I’m not against the change, I feel like it’s asking to fix symptoms of an illness and not the illness itself. When people are opening individual forums to read on already opened posts, it feels like this is unnecessary cumbersome—especially on mobile. Personally, I never do that. I use the activity feeds only, because I can see everything at a glance and I don’t have to explore individual forums one by one. And I make sure my activity feeds are very prominent on the site, so my users also go with them. 

Our forum has been running Invision since 2003, and users are very much stuck in the classical folder paradigm. Attempts to switch or supplement this with a metadata approach (ie, tags) gained little traction.

It's not alike an illness, it's being used to a certain way of doing things. And on a personal level, I'm quite happy for forums in general to eschew the need to mimic social media and operate as they did. To each his own, right?

Thanks for the marketplace suggestion, I'll look in to that, @day_

Edited May 25, 2019 by rllmukforum

[Peter Bonte]

The plugin "Topic Title to First Unread Post" doesn't work on 4.5, is there another solution for this problem/feature?

[Ryan Ashbrook]

13 minutes ago, Peter Bonte said:

The plugin "Topic Title to First Unread Post" doesn't work on 4.5, is there another solution for this problem/feature?

It's a built-in feature - you can choose what happens when clicking on the title: https://invisioncommunity.com/settings/links/

[Peter Bonte]

3 hours ago, Ryan Ashbrook said:

It's a built-in feature - you can choose what happens when clicking on the title: https://invisioncommunity.com/settings/links/

Thank you very much, i overlooked that because of the plugin. Too bad for the default setting but it's a good solution.

[Ohio Riders]

On 9/24/2020 at 1:42 PM, Ryan Ashbrook said:

It's a built-in feature - you can choose what happens when clicking on the title: https://invisioncommunity.com/settings/links/

How can we change the default for all users? Possible? 

[Nathan Explosion]

Profile settings in the ACP