Ocean West Posted July 11 Posted July 11 Suggestion: Can the page navigation in multi-page threads be modified to target the last post on the previous page instead of the top? It would be great if users could choose this setting. Orioni 1
Joel R Posted July 18 Posted July 18 This is an aside, but some general thoughts on reading and browsing multi-page topics: - in v5, there will probably be even less reason to be browsing all of the pages in a multi-page topic with newer features like Topic Summary, helpful, and solutions. For users who are goal-seeking and solution-oriented, they're going to want the fastest and easiest path to their query. For multi-page topics that are social in nature where each post is part of the story, they're going to want to read all the posts (or at least the most reacted posts) - the entire concept of a page with 25 replies (why not 26 replies? Why not 100 replies?) is so Internet 2000s. In a world of mobile first, we really ought to have infinite scroll up or scroll down of prior posts. PanSevence and Maxxius 2
Management Matt Posted July 18 Management Posted July 18 6 hours ago, Joel R said: we really ought to have infinite scroll up or scroll down of prior posts The one big barrier to this is that you may never see the footer of your site again, and that is an important area to a lot of customers. konon 1
Dll Posted July 18 Posted July 18 (edited) 4 minutes ago, Matt said: The one big barrier to this is that you may never see the footer of your site again, and that is an important area to a lot of customers. Why is the footer in a thread important? I can understand it on other pages, but surely the point of a thread is the thread, not distracting people to go elsewhere from a footer in the hope they may scroll that far? Edited July 18 by Dll
Management Matt Posted July 18 Management Posted July 18 18 minutes ago, Dll said: Why is the footer in a thread important? I can understand it on other pages, but surely the point of a thread is the thread, not distracting people to go elsewhere from a footer in the hope they may scroll that far? If we're doing infinite scrolling for topics then it makes sense to do the same for topic lists, which means that on several pages, the footer would not be accessible, but on other pages it would be. That's a poor experience IMO. Another option is to do it in a container, but that may be a bit odd too. We have discussed this internally for years but can't really come to a consensus on how to do it. Infinite scroll would solve a lot of problems too, especially in figuring out pagination which is quite complicated and expensive to do. konon 1
Dll Posted July 18 Posted July 18 41 minutes ago, Matt said: If we're doing infinite scrolling for topics then it makes sense to do the same for topic lists, which means that on several pages, the footer would not be accessible, but on other pages it would be. That's a poor experience IMO. Does it make sense though? Someone on a topic list is looking for content, someone in a topic is consuming content. That's two very different intents. I'd have thought it would make a lot more sense to treat them differently.
Ehren Posted July 18 Posted July 18 When viewing a “mega topic” (let’s say one which would typically span 20+ pages), how would infinite scrolling work? Infinite scrolling would be nice for smaller topics, but my brain can’t think of a nice way to handle long topics. If I viewed that “mega topic” for the first time, I’d be taken to post #1. Imagine needing to scroll 20+ pages of content just to read the most recent reply. Infinite scrolling is tough to implement in large topics unless it’s paired with a “scroll spy” sort of element (which lets you drag a slider to speed through the topic). Paginated content makes it easy to skip through large amounts of content, or return to earlier parts of a topic, using a very common and reliable UI. It even gives you a general idea on the size of the topic (a lot of pages = a lot of content), which isn’t obvious on an infinite scrolling page - you’d just keep scrolling with no hints on how close you are to the end (unless the UI was redesigned to convey this information). Even Google is reverting back to paginated content following their attempt at infinite scrolling, but that’s likely due to other reasons than the ones we’ve discussed. 🤷♂️ Maxxius, Luuuk and konon 3
Dll Posted July 18 Posted July 18 Not sure if it's acceptable to link to other forum software, but have a look at Discourse @Ehren, it got infinite scroll and there are no issues with big threads, such as here: https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/classic-era-patch-updates/1894672 I even found a 12 year old thread with more than 100k posts here: https://forums.mixedmartialarts.com/t/the-sweet-science-the-ug-s-boxing-thread/2086472
Ehren Posted July 19 Posted July 19 Yeah, that’s a good example of the "scroll spy" (or timeline scroll) element I was referring to.. being able to drag a slider to quickly navigate within a topic. It kind of works okay, but I feel like there are some downfalls which are tough to overcome. The main issue I see with that, is I can’t scroll to the top or bottom of the page (on mobile) since new content is constantly loaded. The desktop version doesn't suffer from this issue, only because it has a fixed header and sidebar. As soon as they're gone, you're stuck in scrolling limbo again. This could be alleviated with a “load more replies” button, but then we’re almost back in pagination territory. The scroll spy also needs to be sticky in the sidebar, which means there unfortunately wouldn't be any room for other sidebar widgets within topics. Ryan Ashbrook 1
Dll Posted July 19 Posted July 19 5 hours ago, Ehren said: Yeah, that’s a good example of the "scroll spy" (or timeline scroll) element I was referring to.. being able to drag a slider to quickly navigate within a topic. It kind of works okay, but I feel like there are some downfalls which are tough to overcome. The main issue I see with that, is I can’t scroll to the top or bottom of the page (on mobile) since new content is constantly loaded. The desktop version doesn't suffer from this issue, only because it has a fixed header and sidebar. As soon as they're gone, you're stuck in scrolling limbo again. This could be alleviated with a “load more replies” button, but then we’re almost back in pagination territory. The scroll spy also needs to be sticky in the sidebar, which means there unfortunately wouldn't be any room for other sidebar widgets within topics. The timeline scroller is available on mobile:
Joel R Posted July 27 Posted July 27 On 7/18/2024 at 3:17 AM, Matt said: The one big barrier to this is that you may never see the footer of your site again, and that is an important area to a lot of customers. So .... Some thoughts. 1. Some mobile designs have a bottom menu. In that bottom menu, I can see the menu be expandable (with the action "pull up"). When you pull up, there's obviously a whole new screen area to share additional information, links, or contextual information. Navigationally, this option literally keeps the footer links at the bottom and always accessible. Like the desktop footer. 2. We can probably leverage the vertical menu in some manner. Footers tend to be static information and links, and are literally "another menu". So append it to the other existing menu areas on mobile. 3. I went to go check some popular sites and they don't have a footer in the navigation whether it's post scrolling in Facebook or shopping on Amazon. Ironically, on desktop, they can massive footers (especially Amazon). At some point, there needs to be a recognition that mobile is just not going to show as much information as desktop. Things like massive and complex signatures, massive and complex postbits, etc are legacy overhangs.
TracyIsland Posted July 27 Posted July 27 Would it be possible to have left/right arrow or up/down arrow indicators that equate to previous/next post? When I say post, I am referring to the individual replies to a topic.
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