What favorite UI element will we lose next? Everything?


  • ♿ (Parody)

    Someone used CSS to make a minimal Discourse instance that made sense for them:

    https://meta.discourse.org/t/minimal-discourse/23288?u=boomzilla

    Of course, this means there's new energy directed at removing features. Probably stuff that you (OK, I) like. I responded here:

    https://meta.discourse.org/t/minimal-discourse/23288/64?u=boomzilla


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @boomzilla said:

    this means there's new energy directed at removing features.

    Of course - because it being available right there as CSS which anyone who likes it can easily apply using the existing functionality isn't enough. 😞
    I don't know why they don't just leave it as is (or even bring back things like the Likes column) and then provide clear guidance for customers (or victims) to just hide them with CSS and/or an admin config option and be done with it. That keeps most people happy as it can be made to suit the majority.


  • Banned

    My little demo there is about extensibility, allowing people to ship multiple themes that are beyond CSS, even ... Likes column

    I don't see a core need for both bookmark and star concepts, bookmark can stay. I see no reason to advertise this feature on every topic in the topic list, but if you insisted I guess you could in an extension


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @loopback0 said:

    I don't know why they don't just leave it as is (or even bring back things like the Likes column)

    Suuuuuupooooosedly, they were going to do that.

    @sam said:

    I don't see a core need for both bookmark and star concepts, bookmark can stay.

    👋 I do! I do! For one: A bookmark takes me to a particular post. A starred topic goes to my last unread, just like clicking on a topic any other place. They're different things.

    @sam said:

    I see no reason to advertise this feature on every topic in the topic list, but if you insisted I guess you could in an extension

    OK, I don't care if you remove the stars from the topic lists. But keep the basic functionality.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @sam said:

    I don't see a core need for both bookmark and star concepts, bookmark can stay. I see no reason to advertise this feature on every topic in the topic list, but if you insisted I guess you could in an extension

    But they're there now, why would it need to be an extension? CSS them away for people who don't like them.

    The star column is handy because in the Unread / New views, I can see which of those topics are both unread (or new) AND starred. As long there's a way for that to be the case, that's fine.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    "We want to simplify the interface to make it easier to undersatnd for those whose primary mode of communication online is email and Facebook comments."

    Oh yes, this is something that should be worked towards...making it more accessible for the knuckle draggers that inhabit FB comment areas...


  • Garbage Person

    But the most constructive discourse of all is conservative paranoia, baby photos and "cute couple" holiday pictures!

    And for the record, my primary mode of online communication (by volume) is email. I suspect you'll find the same for any knowledge worker in a sufficiently large company.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    Plus Facebook is often information overload. It's far from a "minimum" interface.

    EDIT - if they want to copy Facebook, they should try using their Infiniscroll-that-doesn't-unload-anything-above-the-last-20-things approach.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    The screenshot from the github linked in Jeff's post:

    Excellent. Even more FUCKING WASTED WHITE SPACE. That's a DEFINITE improvement.

    EDIT: Also, this:

    **Mad street cred** to angetran for design direction.
    😞

  • BINNED

    @Weng said:

    baby photos and "cute couple" holiday pictures

    You forgot cat pictures ... where would the internet be without cats ...

    But you are right, here we are far more superior.

    We prefer foxes!


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Luhmann said:

    We prefer foxes!

    I could lose the fox stuff in the UI and not be sad.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place


  • FoxDev

    @boomzilla said:

    I could lose the fox stuff in the UI and not be sad.

    MY THREAD!

    you're going to close my glorious thread of foxes , aren't you?

    Is this because i didn't get you any presents for the holidays?


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @accalia said:

    you're going to close my glorious thread of foxes , aren't you?

    No, I'm not motivated enough to do anything about it, but I thought I'd try to be a little on topic in my own topic. I could lose all the videogame topics, too, and not be sad.


  • FoxDev

    @boomzilla said:

    I could lose all the videogame topics, too, and not be sad.

    hmm... for the most part i'd agree. that KSP one is fun though.



  • @sam said:

    I don't see a core need for both bookmark and star concepts, bookmark can stay.

    👋 Oh! Oh! Pick me!

    How about this: they're not the same thing.

    • Bookmark: Used to bookmark a specific post that you find interesting. Whether you intend to come back and reply to that post later, or you want to be able to easily refer information in that post whenever you need, bookmarking a post allows you to come back to that post any time you want!
    • Star: Find yourself particularly interested in a topic, but you don't want to constantly hunt through your New and Unread lists to find it? Just star the topic!

    So what is so similar about starring a topic and bookmarking a post?



  • @boomzilla said:

    OK, I don't care if you remove the stars from the topic lists. But keep the basic functionality.

    @Sam: Please don't remove the stars from the topic lists. Go ahead, make them optional, but don't outright remove them like you did the likes column. As has been said:

    @loopback0 said:

    The star column is handy because in the Unread / New views, I can see which of those topics are both unread (or new) AND starred.



  • Cross Posted from meta.d:

    https://meta.discourse.org/t/minimal-discourse/23288/65?u=abarker

    And in case it gets jeffed:

    @codinghorror said:

    Top bar filters are too numerous. Minimal only allows Starred, Top, Latest, and Categories. New and Unread are removed.

    Keep New and Unread. I use those constantly. I'd rather see Categories and Top gone, as I don't use them at all.

    @codinghorror said:

    Private categories should have a lock icon, not a group icon. (BROKEN FOR CATEGORY DROPDOWN LIST)

    If you do that, then the lock icon takes on yet another meaning in addition to the current "closed topic" and "archived topic" meanings. How many meanings to you want to attribute to one icon? Better to use a different symbol when possible. Honestly, I think that the lock icon is appropriate in this case, so maybe the"closed topic" and "archived topic" icons would need to be changed as well.

    @codinghorror said:

    Remove Activity, Users, and Posts from the topic overview.

    I find this information useful. Please keep.

    @codinghorror said:

    Remove the user stats below the OP's post

    Again, I find this useful. Keep.

    @codinghorror said:

    Remove zebra stripes from category list

    The main reason for the striping is to help visually distinguish between the separate rows of data. With the color scheme you have set up, this distinction is subtle, but distinctive enough to fulfill its purpose. Removing it would just give you a bunch of text on a plain background, with nothing to distinguish between independent chunks of data. Removing the striping would actually make things harder for the end user. I recommend keeping the striping on the main topic list.

    @codinghorror said:

    Stars and starring somehow survived, even though I am leaning towards removing starring altogether and relying on bookmarks instead.

    Starring and bookmarks are different. You bookmark a post, you star a topic. You need both. A bookmark can only take you to a post, the same post, every time. But a star can take you to the first unread post in the topic! It can bring extra attention to a topic in the Unread or Latest list, make you think, "I want to look at that one first." Keep the stars.

    @codinghorror said:

    what part of our UI would you vote off the island first, right now, today?

    The Top filter. I found it totally useless.


    Now, if you ignore everything else in this post remember this next part:

    I think that the focus should be shifted from "how should we change the UI?" to "let's make the UI easier to customize". Back when the Likes column was removed, there were a lot of complaints, and @codinghorror and @sam promised that there would be a customization interface post-v1 so that the Likes column could be brought back, if desired. Work on that instead. Once that's done, it will make this kind of thing arbitrary. Admins will be able to make these kind of decisions for their own sites, and topics like this will be pointless.

    Edit: Finally got the formatting!!! Stupid markdown!



  • @loopback0 said:

    Mad street cred to angetran for design direction.

    A bold new design


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    I've come up with an even more minimal Discourse.

    html { font: 14px/14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; display: none; }



  • We had the colour vampires sucking out all the colours and gradients (VS2010 vs VS2013), now software features are being removed awesome.



  • Seriously if I had that as demo at work, I would have been asked "What the fuck is this shit?".


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @lucas said:

    "What the fuck is this shit?".

    A common response to Discourse.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    Hey, for a version 0.1 alpha this looks pretty good so far.
    high pitched mumble is audible for a few seconds
    What was that? This is for 1.2? And it has been released to the public already? What is this? Sonic '06 of forum software?
    What did it look like before?
    more mumble
    They REMOVED features? If we want them back we have to write plugins ourselves?
    What the fuck is this shit?
    papers are being ruffled, people are being fired, company dies!

    Filed Under: This was a live reanactment of a scene that should probably happen somewhere.


  • 🚽 Regular

    <aside class="quote">
    As for the categories in the hamburger, I want the hamburger to go full height and slide out from the right in 1.3 and beyond. That'll provide a lot more room -- and there is no other rational way to get to an arbitrary category from a topic. I do this jump from topic to different category a fair bit, actually, so this would inconvenience me.
    </aside> <aside class="quote">
    If you're going ahead with this, I suggest you make it accordion-like, with expandable sections for notifications, categories, messages and bookmarks lists. And toss "new", "unread" and "suggested" lists over there too, why not? (Edit: because topic titles are long and the sidebar should be narrow is a valid reason.)

    Also make this new side-menu pinnable so that people with big enough monitors can leave it open.

    </aside>

    What do you guys think about this?


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Zecc said:

    What do you guys think about this?

    I'm once again bemused at them trying to take away something that works and isn't obnoxious (IMHO) and maybe replace it with something that probably isn't as easy to use.

    I'm not sure that the accordion idea is good here. But maybe I'd need to see it. I find lots of expanding widgets to be barriers to usability in the way a popup menu (without any sub-menus) isn't.



  • I'm sitting here, trying not to give myself a concussion because of how blind they are to the differences between starring and bookmarks.

    Really‽ It's not that hard!



  • Maybe they're planning to just use bookmarks for both posts and topics?


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @nightware said:

    Maybe they're planning to just use bookmarks for both posts and topics?

    I brought that up, and pointed out that I don't care if they rename starred topics to something else, just that they don't get rid of them in favor of Sam's current proposal of making them bookmarks to the OP of the topic. :rolleyes:



  • @nightware said:

    Maybe they're planning to just use bookmarks for both posts and topics?

    Sam has said that he wants to turn stars into bookmarks on the OP of the topic. He doesn't seem to understand that doing so will fundamentally change the behavior.

    :headdesk:



  • @boomzilla said:

    Sam's current proposal of making them bookmarks to the OP

    Yeah, that's not as good, loses your place, hope they can understand that.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    I have an idea...just make everything a modal dialog.

    Seriously, it won't be any more intrusive than what they are proposing. (if I understand it correctly) And we already have toasters everywhere.



  • @nightware said:

    hope they can understand that.

    Apparently they can understand but they don't care (or if you want to be nice about it think the cost of maintaining it is too high).

    https://meta.discourse.org/t/minimal-discourse/23288/80

    @codinghorror said:

    we will convert your stars to bookmarks and you will have remarkably similar, if not quite identical, functionality.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @codinghorror said:

    we will convert your stars to bookmarks and you will have remarkably similar, if not quite identical, functionality.

    This is akin to UI rape. Discourse promotes rape culture. Alert the Tumblrs.



  • @loopback0 said:

    I've come up with an even more minimal Discourse.

    html { font: 14px/14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; display: none; }

    We already have that applied randomly here with the WSoD.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    They're pissing on us and telling us it's raining. I put a post up saying that in nicer words.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @boomzilla said:

    They're pissing on us and telling us it's raining.

    One of my first project management jobs was for a company that did environmental earthwork, of which a large portion of environmental earthmoving is done in landfills. That taught me the lesson that if you spend a large proximity of your time in close contact with trash and refuse, you get used to the odor and you do not smell it anymore.

    Using Discourse is a lot like that...


  • ♿ (Parody)

    OK, so as far as the star things going away, we'll get some kind of a topics with bookmarks in them, which is effectively what the starred filter does. So it's not actually as bad as it seemed.



  • @locallunatic said:

    Apparently they can understand but they don't care (or if you want to be nice about it think the cost of maintaining it is too high).

    Which makes no sense, because they need do nothing to maintain the current functionality. Converting to the new functionality will require {unknown quantity} of work.



  • @abarker said:

    because they need do nothing to maintain the current functionality

    But it sounds like due to differing code paths if they add or modify anything they need to do it multiple places so for it to not add work then keeping stars means that they never get updates/fixes.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    The new way, with the special filter gets us what the stars gave us. The only difference is that you bookmark some post in the topic, and then it shows up in the new filter.



  • @boomzilla said:

    gets us what the stars gave us

    Oh, and clicking on the topic in this list gets you to last unread instead of the bookmark. OK I see how that gets you the same behavior, just don't use stars myself so I don't have personal experience with them.



  • @boomzilla said:

    you bookmark some post in the topic, and then it shows up in the new filter

    Which is completely counter the reason to have separate features. I have bookmarks for things in single posts I want to reference later, and I have starred topics to find my favorite topics again.

    Looks like now I'd have to change all of my Discourse bookmarks to browser bookmarks (and thus, lose the preview of text for it) so I don't have a bunch of old, uncared for topics cluttering that list.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @ChaosTheEternal said:

    Looks like now I'd have to change all of my Discourse bookmarks to browser bookmarks (and thus, lose the preview of text for it) so I don't have a bunch of old, uncared for topics cluttering that list.

    No, you'll still have bookmarks as bookmarks. We just get a new top level post filter that only shows topics with posts that you've bookmarked. You'll maybe never use that, just like you never use stars.

    @abarker and I will use the new topic filter several times a day, like we currently use the star filter.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    Looking at my bookmarks, and they're mostly in topics I currently have starred.

    If you used stars and have lots of bookmarks in non-starred topics, then you might find the new stuff not so useful.



  • @boomzilla said:

    OK, so as far as the star things going away, we'll get some kind of a topics with bookmarks in them, which is effectively what the starred filter does. So it's not actually as bad as it seemed.

    Have you considered the scenario I just posted on meta.d?

    @abarker@meta.d said:

    How will you differentiate between bookmarking the first post of a topic and bookmarking the topic? There may be times when a topic's initial post has information you want to refer back to later, but the topic as a whole isn't really that important to you. How will Discourse know when a user wants to bookmark just the OP versus when they want to bookmark an entire topic?



  • @boomzilla said:

    No, you'll still have bookmarks as bookmarks. We just get a new top level post filter that only shows topics with posts that you've bookmarked. You'll maybe never use that, just like you never use stars.

    @abarker and I will use the new topic filter several times a day, like we currently use the star filter.

    My understanding was that the topic bookmark filter would only show topics where the OP was bookmarked.



  • @boomzilla said:

    that only shows topics with posts that you've bookmarked

    That's what I mean about having a bunch of old, uncared for topics cluttering up.

    @boomzilla said:

    have lots of bookmarks in non-starred topics

    I currently have about 10, for the original built purpose that would now show the topics in said list.

    @abarker said:

    My understanding was that the topic bookmark filter would only show topics where the OP was bookmarked.

    If that's the case, it's at least not nearly as bad (minus the scenario you mentioned).


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @abarker said:

    My understanding was that the topic bookmark filter would only show topics where the OP was bookmarked.

    I don't think so. I think they'll convert current stars to OP bookmarks.

    @ChaosTheEternal said:

    I currently have about 10, for the original built purpose that would now show the topics in said list.

    Yeah, but if you never go look at it...It's not a list, per se, but a topic filter that you could look at. That's built based on your bookmarks.



  • Overall, this just goes to show that the Discourse roadmap looks like this:

    Disclaimer: The image above is for illustrative purposes only. The actual Discourse roadmap may actually be worse.


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