Flarum Categories

UaMV

It appears that categories do not currently have any notice that they contain new posts unread by the user. Is this correct? If so, and if Flarum allows, it'd be great to see this considered/added as an enhancement.

askvortsov Also, thanks for this fix. Working great on my end.

askvortsov

UaMV It appears that categories do not currently have any notice that they contain new posts unread by the user. Is this correct? If so, and if Flarum allows, it'd be great to see this considered/added as an enhancement.

I think that could be cool! Do you have any thoughts/ideas as to how the interface could look?

UaMV

askvortsov Something like this might be enough to help distinguish.

Highlighting Category New Posts

The All Discussion page adds notification of new posts to the right of each discussion, so I expect that is where people would most likely look for new discussions posted in a category. This might call for a different icon. Not sure. Then, to help that bar stand out, you could simply adjust the box-shadow to darken it and lift it from the page a bit. Optionally, you could add an inset box-shadow with a border of the same color as the bar to set it apart a bit more – might make it too busy, though.

Could possibly add the word New or Unread under the icon and number to better define what that means.

askvortsov

UaMV Hmm I like this! One concern is the count though: If there's millions of unread posts, it would be database resource-heavy to calculate that for each tag. It would also take up a lot more space than this design proposes.

One idea I had was adding a shaded dot next to the discussion count, post count, and most recent discussion title to signify that it's unread (it'd be a binary (exists unread vs no unread) as opposed to a count though. What would you think about that?

jordanjay29

I like the border indicator UaMV, that looks innovative.

The traditional method would just be changing the icon itself to fade/brighten or change appearance to indicate something new.

I'm also fine with just a binary indicator and not a count.

clarkwinkelmann

askvortsov binary or count, I'd guess it will have the same complexity. If you do implement tag read status, you might as well store the count and provide an option to switch between the two options visually.

I however can't think of any resource-friendly way to see if any discussion in the tag is not read. This can't easily be cached, so it would have to be counted every time it's requested. Also if it's returned via the tags serializer, you'll need to trigger a tag refresh when the page is accessed if you want to always provide the most up to date information. In contrast the "last post" information of tags is currently never updated until you trigger a full page refresh.

UaMV

I don't know enough about the resources needed for something like this, but definitely like the idea of it. I did notice that there is no such indication on the Tags page, either, so doesn't surprise me that there is probably some hurdle here.

askvortsov What would you think about that?

jordanjay29 I like the border indicator UaMV, that looks innovative.

I'd be all for some sort of visual indication w/o the count. All Discussions makes a pretty good distinction between discussions w/ unread posts and those fullly read. In addition to the binary indicator (i.e. unfilled/filled quote bubble), it also boldens and blackens the text. I think I'd like to see some sort of strengthening of the category (in addition to any binary icon) to mirror that. Whether that is a inset box-shadow/border (matching the text color) as shown above or a lifted bar or something else, I don't know.

If you do opt to go one of those routes, this is the CSS I applied here to mock that up…

/* for the lifted bar */
box-shadow: 0 2px 5px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.58), 0 4px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.45);

/* for the bordered bar */
border: 2px solid rgb(41,106,127);
box-shadow: 0 2px 4px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.18), 0 3px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15), inset 0 0 0 4px;

askvortsov

UaMV While this would be really cool, I'm hesitant because of the computational load. One idea I had is adding a read/unread marker to the lastDiscussion, that shouldn't add too much load time. What would you think about that?

UaMV

askvortsov I'm not sure on conventions re: development in Flarum, but might it be possible to also use that check to add a class to a category bar when it has new posts? In that way, folks could target the bar with their own CSS.

askvortsov

UaMV I absolutely agree about adding a css class for extensibility (if there are other similar cases this extension is missing please let me know, I'd be happy to add them in!) But just to confirm about this:

askvortsov One idea I had is adding a read/unread marker to the lastDiscussion, that shouldn't add too much load time.

This wouldn't exactly accomplish an indicator of unread posts in general, but by indicating whether the last post is read or unread it might come slightly close in functionality. What would you think about a solution like that?

UaMV

askvortsov One idea I had is adding a read/unread marker to the lastDiscussion, that shouldn't add too much load time. What would you think about that?

The more I think about this, the more I like the idea of having some sort of indication. Up to this point, I think we've been discussing an indicator for unread status of posts and how resource heavy that'd be. Would we encounter the same issues in checking only whether there are new discussions (not unread discussions) w/in in a tag?

jordanjay29 Unintuitive for one, since it breaks longstanding forum traditions of unread indicators on categorization levels.

It seems that Discourse handles things this way on that category level – notifying of new discussions, but not necessarily new posts w/in existing discussions.

jordanjay29

askvortsov This wouldn't exactly accomplish an indicator of unread posts in general, but by indicating whether the last post is read or unread it might come slightly close in functionality. What would you think about a solution like that?

Unintuitive for one, since it breaks longstanding forum traditions of unread indicators on categorization levels. Better to go without in that case, imo.

askvortsov

UaMV new discussions (not unread discussions) w/in in a tag?

New discussions relative to when? The benefit of using lastPostedDiscussion is that you can check whether 1 discussion has unread posts very trivially. We could check if new discussions have been added since the user marked all posts as read (as that's stored directly in the database), but i'm not sure if that would fulfill your goal.

nexromant Is it possible to change the size of the icon blocks and font for the mobile version?

I'm always open to style change ideas! Do you have any particular thoughts on how to improve the look on mobile? I agree that it looks a bit large, but I fear that reducing the font too much would just end up illegible.

One thing I've been considering is an option for "compact mobile", which would hide the description, and display everything a lot more compactly. Is that something you'd like to see?

nexromant

Hello! Great extension! Is it possible to change the size of the icon blocks and font for the mobile version?

jordanjay29

askvortsov One thing I've been considering is an option for "compact mobile", which would hide the description, and display everything a lot more compactly. Is that something you'd like to see?

I actually think this would make a lot of sense. Descriptions can always be read from the tag view itself.

nexromant

askvortsov I could draw something like in Photoshop as I see the mobile version with categories, and you can decide for Yourself whether it should look like this or not

askvortsov

nexromant Sure, that'd be great!

nexromant

askvortsov

It may not be the best design solution for colors, but in favor of adaptability for the mobile version, you can remove the widget for the last discussion in the tag

askvortsov

nexromant Whoah I like this idea a lot! A few thoughts:

Considering Jordan's comment, and that descriptions can be very long, what if we put the most recent discussion where you have the description?
Do you envision any ideas from this design being applicable to the desktop version? I agree that I like this a lot more than the current mobile design (I'll add it as an option in settings so that people can choose between designs)

nexromant

askvortsov About long descriptions - if I'm not mistaken, you can trim the text using CSS pseudo-class :: after

askvortsov

nexromant Alright that's fair. The only question is whether the description or the last posted discussion would be a better use of the space (since titles tend to be self-explanatory, and the discussion we could put in would barely be longer than the title).

askvortsov Do you envision any ideas from this design being applicable to the desktop version? I agree that I like this a lot more than the current mobile design (I'll add it as an option in settings so that people can choose between designs)

Also, any thoughts on this? I'm also trying to figure out how to best structure the options in settings (as there's a LOT of them already).

Maybe we should have several themes for this extension?

askvortsov

v0.2.5

NEW: Compact Mobile Mode, inspired by nexromant's awesome illustrations. Test it out at https://forum.youthneuro.org/. You can able this via a switch in settings.
Also, reorganized the settings modal a bit to be more manageable/maneuverable, added headings, etc

Screenshot of Compact Mobile Mode:

As always, let me know if you encounter any bugs or have feature ideas!

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