Front-page Comments Idea


  • :belt_onion:

    I've gotten more used to the infinite scrolling, but still dislike it in its current implementation.

    One thing I do a lot is grab the scroll bar with the mouse to skim through a large number of posts. I can speed read fast enough to see if there was anything I wanted to stop on to digest in full. But with infinite scrolling in its current form, the second I hit the bottom of whatever set of posts is loaded, it loads the next set and jumps the scrollbar on me... leaving me unable to continue skimming down without releasing the scrollbar and restarting.

    In long topics I end up having to do this repeatedly, and it is annoying the piss out of me. I tried using the [end] key to get it to load the thread so I can use the scrollbar as god (or whoever invented it) intended, but then Discourse unloads the posts from the top and screws me over going back up.

    Of course, if there were pages, I would have to scroll+skim and then have to release to hit a page button... but I usually set forums to whatever the max limit is on posts to load, so it's basically "infinite scroll" already unless there are over 250 posts or something. I like the idea of infinite scroll. I just can't stand how the Discourse implementation breaks the real scrollbar in its current implementation.

    Surely there has to be some way to have our cake and eat it too? (have our infinite scroll and have a working scrollbar?) Maybe if you loaded all of the posts/content but didn't attach the ember.js crap to every post until they come into view, or get close to view?



  • You can now click on the ^ thing on the green bar and jump to any given post on the list, or go direct to top or bottom. It's not quite pagination but it's an improvement. But I realise that's not really a substitute for what you're asking for - and I don't think there's going to be.



  • You could use PageUp and PageDown, or J and K

    Filed Under: Who has time to finagle the mouse into grabbing a scroll bar anyways?


  • :belt_onion:

    @DrakeSmith said:

    You could use PageUp and PageDown, or J and K

    Uh... using those keys jumps the whole screen instantly past the content I was trying to read. I can't speed read what isn't on the screen. J/K are close to useful, but still jumpier than if I can use the scrollbar to control the speed myself.



  • How about the good old fashioned up and down arrow keys?


  • :belt_onion:

    Those are indeed better now that I've tried them. Still lose the ability to control the speed at which I skim, but it is closer to what I want. If the up/down keys had pressure sensitivity so I could push harder to scroll faster it would be ok.



  • In some places that would sound so wrong.


  • 🚽 Regular

    I was going to suggest autoscrolling (holding mouse wheel and dragging), but then I tried it myself and it's super jittery.

    You'd have to be careful about where you were clicking too.

    And it requires that you have a clickable mouse wheel to begin with.

    So, in short: never mind.



  • That sounds even more wrong than talking about pushing things harder.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Arantor said:

    How about the good old fashioned up and down arrow keys?

    Filed under: crazytalk, klatyzarc


  • Banned

    @darkmatter said:

    Surely there has to be some way to have our cake and eat it too? (have our infinite scroll and have a working scrollbar?)

    has a fully javascript scrollbar, we are open to this, it's just not a V1.0 timeline appropriate item to take on. And some of the work @riking did could be pulled in there, eventually.

    @DrakeSmith said:

    You could use PageUp and PageDown,

    Also, space and shift+space works too.

    @Zecc said:

    I was going to suggest autoscrolling (holding mouse wheel and dragging)

    Autoscrolling (middle click and hold) is a crazy weird artifact of .. something.

    http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/internet/firefox/disable-that-irritating-autoscroll-feature-in-firefox/


  • 🚽 Regular

    @codinghorror said:

    So you try to middle click on a link on a page and miss the link…
    I think that's their bigger problem. Autoscrolling only starts scrolling once you pull the pointer away, anyway.

    But doesn't Firefox come with autoscrolling disabled by default? I know I had to enable mine explicitly. Not that I actually use it, I usually resort to touchpad two-finger scroll, which give me the velocity control darkmatter is looking for. 👍



  • @codinghorror said:

    Autoscrolling (middle click and hold)Infiniscrolling is a crazy weird artifact of .. something.

    FTFY

    Actually, it might have to do with three-button mice with no wheel. It's also more precise than the wheel. And "I miss the click and weird stuff happens" is the worst excuse to hate a feature ever.


    Filed under: i missed the End key and pressed Delete and now my files are gone :c


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Maciejasjmj said:

    It's also more precise than the wheel.

    But not as precise as touchpad scrolling done well, where you quickly feel like you're just moving the surface of the page around.



  • @dkf said:

    But not as precise as touchpad scrolling done well, where you quickly feel like you're just moving the surface of the page around.

    On the downside, touchpads are way more annoying when it comes to pointing at things. Plus, not everyone has one.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Maciejasjmj said:

    On the downside, touchpads are way more annoying when it comes to pointing at things.

    That really depends on the quality of the hardware/firmware implementation. Most manufacturers of PCs do a fairly slapdash job. Apple's paid a lot more attention (probably in part due to having a very strong following in laptops for many years).

    Wouldn't want to use a touchpad for FPS games, but I don't play them anyway. 😉
    @Maciejasjmj said:

    Plus, not everyone has one.

    Not everyone has a mouse either. So? (There's a sizeable demographic that does have a touchpad, and a mostly separate demographic that has a mouse.)


    Filed under: mice cause me carpal tunnel issues, but touchpads don't


  • Banned

    This is why touchscreens are a bigger deal on PCs, they are the only "touchpad" you'll ever get on a PC that is not horrible.



  • @codinghorror said:

    Autoscrolling (middle click and hold) is a crazy weird artifact of .. something.

    I like middle-click autoscrolling, but only in Opera (seriously, is it really that hard to implement Opera's completely smooth autoscrolling in other browsers? No other browser lets me middle-click somewhere, move the mouse cursor a few pixels down, which makes the page drift upwards slowly enough to allow me to keep reading, while at the same time scrolling down one line in the same time I read it; note, this is Opera Classic only - while scrolling is still smooth in Opera Blink, it's lowest speed is too fast).
    @codinghorror said:
    This is why touchscreens are a bigger deal on PCs, they are the only "touchpad" you'll ever get on a PC that is not horrible.

    Touchscreens on desktop PCs are tiring. I can work with keyboard+mouse for hours, while pointing at screen physically makes my hand hurt after 10-15 minutes.



  • What about those of us that use trackballs? No love for trackballs here? 😢


  • Banned

    @Maciejasjmj said:

    it might have to do with three-button mice with no wheel

    I'll be damned, I think you are right.

    But who makes three button mice with no wheel these days? Where could I even buy one if I wanted to?

    So isn't this yet another crazy artifact (with bizarre behavior that affects everyone) based on bullshit neverending legacy PC design elements?

    Filed under: Steve Jobs was right to get rid of the floppy drive



  • I don't know anyone that makes them like that any more, but I still have the mouse I bought a few years ago that has three buttons and no scroll wheel.

    I still think scrollwheels that are pressable as buttons is a WTF from a usability standpoint though ;)


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Arantor said:

    I still think scrollwheels that are pressable as buttons is a WTF from a usability standpoint though

    I think you're right, but only theoretically. You can have my clickable wheel when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.



  • Come to the trackball side, we have cookies and a scroll wheel that doesn't pretend to be a button.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    Been there, done that, bought the stupid t-shirt. My original statement stands.



  • See, most of my objection to the clickable wheel is that invariably I end up scrolling while I'm trying to press, which results in all kinds of frustrations. But if you want it that badly, you're more than welcome to it ;)



  • @codinghorror said:

    But who makes three button mice with no wheel these days?

    Lenovo? Not that long ago some of their desktops still came with wheel-less mice (but at least they were optical).

    Not that it matters - middle-click scrolling serves slightly different purpose than mousewheel scrolling. It allows for automatic smooth scrolling where you adjust the speed by moving the mouse up or down.

    @Arantor said:

    I still think scrollwheels that are pressable as buttons is a WTF from a usability standpoint though

    The first wheel mouse I bought (which I believe was the first ever wheel mouse - Genius EasyScroll) had a separate middle button, and a wheel button.

    @Arantor said:

    See, most of my objection to the clickable wheel is that invariably I end up scrolling while I'm trying to press, which results in all kinds of frustrations.

    I never had that problem, and I click my wheel enough that I replaced my last 3 mice because I wore out the contacts on wheel button (Logitech seriously needs to fix whatever they're using for the wheel button on their high-end wireless mice).



  • I used to use a Logitech M500. Not sure what was going on but the silvery edges of the scrollwheel used to go green after using the mouse for a while. Didn't like my skin, I think... perhaps it's the Logitech setup for the middle button in general?


  • BINNED

    @Arantor said:

    I still think scrollwheels that are pressable as buttons is a WTF from a usability standpoint though

    From a quick google search it would seem it has a tilt wheel as well.

    I liked my tilt wheel. The spring(s) were too weak and I accidentally tilted it instead of middleclicking on many an occasion, but I still prefer it to side buttons which almost always require twisting my thumb into positions not intended for human hands.



  • @Onyx said:

    I liked my tilt wheel. The spring(s) were too weak and I accidentally tilted it instead of middleclicking on many an occasion, but I still prefer it to side buttons which almost always require twisting my thumb into positions not intended for human hands.

    My last two or three mice have had tilt wheels, but I almost never use that feature, because it's actually quite hard to tilt the wheel. In contrast, I use the side buttons all the time, and have done so for about 19 years (all of my wheel mice had side buttons, one of which was by default set to Alt+Tab; when driver support for that was removed, I wrote a workaround that works with all mice).


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @ender said:

    Not that it matters - middle-click scrolling serves slightly different purpose than mousewheel scrolling. It allows for automatic smooth scrolling where you adjust the speed by moving the mouse up or down.

    I'd have thought that was a feature of the mouse driver, not the application?



  • @dkf said:

    That really depends on the quality of the hardware/firmware implementation. Most manufacturers of PCs do a fairly slapdash job. Apple's paid a lot more attention (probably in part due to having a very strong following in laptops for many years).

    Wouldn't want to use a touchpad for FPS games, but I don't play them anyway.

    I don't know. I've never really used a touchpad that allowed me to both precisely point at small things and swoop the whole screen.

    @dkf said:

    Not everyone has a mouse either. So? (There's a sizeable demographic that does have a touchpad, and a mostly separate demographic that has a mouse.)

    You can connect a mouse to a laptop, but connecting a touchpad to a PC is not really standard practice.

    @codinghorror said:

    But who makes three button mice with no wheel these days? Where could I even buy one if I wanted to?

    I guess nobody - the only one I've had was connected to the RS232 port. But the feature was there, and some people probably got used to it, so why take it away?

    @Onyx said:

    tilt wheel

    At work, I have a Logitech mouse with a tilt wheel. You can set it up so that tilting scrolls the page, but left-tilting scrolls down and right-tilting scrolls up. AFAIK, there's no way to set it the other way around.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Maciejasjmj said:

    You can connect a mouse to a laptop, but connecting a touchpad to a PC is not really standard practice.

    Going by my not-particularly-well-randomized sample obtained by watching my fellow passengers on the train when I commute to work (and excluding myself) using an external mouse is relatively common with a Windows-based laptop, and rather rare with an Apple laptop. Which fits my thesis that Apple's hardware/firmware is better for the sorts of tasks that people tend to do on trains, though they're less oriented towards online gaming. (Especially on the route I commute, where connectivity tends to be very patchy due to tunnels, deep cuttings and high hills.)



  • @dkf said:

    I'd have thought that was a feature of the mouse driver, not the application?

    Now that you mention it, I do believe some drivers take over the middle click, and implement their own broken version of scrolling with it - but I never run any such driver support software on my machines, because it always just breaks stuff I want to do.
    Anyway, middle-click scrolling is implemented in most programs natively, and usually works quite well.
    @Maciejasjmj said:

    I don't know. I've never really used a touchpad that allowed me to both precisely point at small things and swoop the whole screen.

    I find that enabling momentum in Synaptics touchpad settings makes it much easier to use (gives you the feel of using a trackball).

    @Maciejasjmj said:

    I guess nobody - the only one I've had was connected to the RS232 port. But the feature was there, and some people probably got used to it, so why take it away?

    I've got a Lenovo 3-button wheel-less optical USB mouse connected to a server at work (but the mouse originally came with some workstation).

    @dkf said:

    Which fits my thesis that Apple's hardware/firmware is better for the sorts of tasks that people tend to do on trains, though they're less oriented towards online gaming.

    Default settings in Windows touchpad drivers are quite bad, and most people never change them. Also, certain brands (I'm looking at you HP) seem to use the cheapest trackpads they can get, which means that some advanced features don't work at all (mostly two and three-finger detection, so two-finger right-click and scroll don't work, even if you update the drivers).



  • @Maciejasjmj said:

    You can connect a mouse to a laptop, but connecting a touchpad to a PC is not really standard practice.


  • BINNED

    @Maciejasjmj said:

    At work, I have a Logitech mouse with a tilt wheel. You can set it up so that tilting scrolls the page, but left-tilting scrolls down and right-tilting scrolls up. AFAIK, there's no way to set it the other way around.

    I really wouldn't know what Windows drivers allow. On Linux the tilt wheel got recognized and bound to horizontal scroll by default. It was freaking awesome for graphics software, I could scroll in any direction without panning when zoomed in on my drawing. Sounds like such a little thing, but being able to move around without having to swipe my mouse all over the place was a godsend to me.

    Tilting the wheel when no horizontal scrollbar wasn't available did nothing. But applications that allowed for custom bindings (like screenshot/screencap applications, games, messaging software..) detected the tilt as what would regularly be side buttons and I could bind whatever I wanted to them. This, of course, overrode the scroll, but I never needed both working at the same time so I didn't mind.


  • Banned

    I had completely forgotten about that external Apple touchpad thing. Does anyone use it in Windows? Does it even work in Windows.



  • Of course it would work in Windows, should anyone be so inclined, because Windows treats it like a wireless mouse, just as Windows considers the Apple touchpad as a mouse even though it's wired up differently.

    Boot Camp is a wonderful thing.



  • @Arantor said:

    Boot Camp is a wonderful thing.

    Especially when Windows starts BSODing because of Apple's broken touchpad drivers (I could BSOD Windows running in bootcamp by hovering my hand over the touchpad).



  • O RLY?

    Filed under: typing this from a MacBook Pro running Windows 7



  • @Arantor said:

    Filed under: typing this from a MacBook Pro running Windows 7

    Ditto. Apple's drivers seem pretty good, mostly.

    Filed under: typing this from a Lenovo X230 running OSX 10.9.3


  • Considered Harmful

    @ender said:

    Not that it matters - middle-click scrolling serves slightly different purpose than mousewheel scrolling. It allows for automatic smooth scrolling where you adjust the speed by moving the mouse up or down.

    Reading this very thread, I half-consciously noticed that I was alternating between middle-click-drift scrolling and mousewheel spinclick scrolling. The former is a nice "cruise control" when I have a steady pace going, the latter is better when I alternate between reading and contemplating what I've read.


  • Considered Harmful

    @codinghorror said:

    I had completely forgotten about that external Apple touchpad thing. Does anyone use it in Windows? Does it even work in Windows.

    I had a coworker who used nothing but this. He also wore toe-shoes, and had blue hair, and wore a different joke t-shirt every day. He was That Guy.


    Filed under: He also armed the whole office with Nerf guns, which I have to say was a positive change., Until I bought a fully automatic.


  • Banned

    Oh yes, this is the one you want

    Filed under: once you go full auto, you never go back



  • @Arantor said:

    Filed under: typing this from a MacBook Pro running Windows 7

    Really. I'm not sure what it depends on, but I've seen BSODs in applemtp.sys on most macbooks with Windows. There were several driver updates that supposedly fixed the problem, but I ended up having to disable the driver at most clients that run bootcamp (I don't have or use a mac, but I have several clients that do, and that were hitting this problem; on one Macbook Air it was so bad that Windows 7 would BSOD during bootup even if you went to safe mode, so I had to delete applemtp.sys from rescue environment).
    Usually it bluescreened if I lightly touched the trackpad, but I triggered it several times by hovering my palm over it.
    @tufty said:
    Ditto. Apple's drivers seem pretty good, mostly.

    Not their Windows/bootcamp drivers.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @ender said:

    Usually it bluescreened if I lightly touched the trackpad, but I triggered it several times by hovering my palm over it.

    It sensed a disturbance in the RDF.


  • Considered Harmful


  • Banned

    The Jolt is really good, actually -- excellent single shot blaster.

    The CS-18 is what you want. Full auto, clip system, "elite" series, introduced late last year. The stampede is much older.

    Filed under: I have a 3d-printed clip that lets you mount a Jolt to the CS-18 rails as an alternate secondary shot. Yes really I do.



  • Huh. And here I was, thinking that buying Nerf guns for the office was as much a geek stereotype as robotic blow-up dolls.


    Filed under: those are the geek stereotype, right?


  • Considered Harmful

    @Maciejasjmj said:

    Huh. And here I was, thinking that buying Nerf guns for the office was as much a geek stereotype as robotic blow-up dolls.


    Filed under: those are the geek stereotype, right?

    You leave Sally out of this!


  • Banned

    Here's the clip, basically. The only meaningful use I have ever had for 3d printing so far..


Log in to reply