Viewing more discussions at a time

The new layout looks much better, but I find it more difficult to browse because the forum only lists five threads unless you scroll down and click "Load More." The old forum listed more than 30 threads at once, so it was easy to find the posts I was looking for and to explore new topics that I hadn't read yet. The new layout is much less friendly in these respects, containing much less information per page, and leading me to have to click much more to find the information I need. I can't escape the feeling that I'm missing out on discussions because they're hidden away somewhere.

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Bugs & Features

Comments

Tim_Sutherland_52834

I find that I have to follow any discussion I find of interest. It doesn't help me find new discussions easily though.

Mike_Minh_Truong_54120

Agree.

SteveM_20803

Right now for new posts, I look at how old they are. Meaning I look at ones that were created since I was last on. On existing threads I really don't want to have to follow everything in order to keep up with things. It would be nice if there was a read/ unread status per individual on each post. Then you could just read your unread items.

Mike_Minh_Truong_54120

Agree.

Andrew_Hsu_30145

Thanks for the feedback. We're shipping an update pretty soon that will help fix this! We already have an 'unread comments' feature, so if you've seen a post already and come back to it later, it will show how many new comments there are and mark them with a blue dot. Is that feature obvious to you/working for you?

ttpoker

I concur. I visually love the new design, but the usability has been compromised. A compromise that would return some (but not all) of the prior utilitarian functionality would be to provide an option to collapse all threads to just display the thread title.

I get what you were trying to do Andrew, but a forum is not the same thing as a Facebook wall. Facebook is for passive commenting, a forum is for active usability. I think it can be saved to get the best of both worlds, but it will require a compromise.

Brandon_Byrd_40557

Yep, that feature's working (and is clear enough). One of the things that I liked on the old forum, however, was that if you loaded a thread that you'd already viewed, it would automatically jump to the new posts. Obviously, this doesn't work with the new format since each thread can have sub-threads with sub-discussions. This might be alleviated somewhat by having the default setting for ordering comments be "new" rather than "hot."

Tim_Sutherland_52834

I find the blue dot easy to miss when scrolling through the comments

list as the new comment is not always at the end. Is it possible to

have the dot larger or a blue bar down the side like the red bar on the notification

comments (when you click on the notification comment it takes you to the comment and has a red bar down the left side.

Rickard_Modig_19323

It's prettier now but not as accessible for a "power user" (looking up information quickly, browsing topics for ideas, etc). I know you're still working on becoming the best iteration of Chefsteps ever and I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with. Always going to support this community in any way I can.

dmg_3440

No. it wasn't obvious (the blued dot). I had no idea about the blue dot. But more intriguing is why it only appears in some postings and not in others. See image included. In this case your posting does not have a blue dot (I haven't read it before) and the new one has it. I might have open the posting, but not actually read the comments, I can't remember; maybe that is the issue here). Also, notice how the space is badly utilized. My screen is wasted by the links on the right and the white space on the left and I can only read two responses at a time. Also, it would be great to be able to quote parts of a posting, so it is clear what I am referring to (I was expecting that if I highlighted a section of your posting, and hit reply, i would be quoting that section of your message, but it didn't work that way.

--dmg

mm. it looks like the forum software does not like tiffs.