Show which discussions have been partially read

matteocontrini

Hello,

a user of my forum proposed a very interesting idea: showing in some way in the discussion list which unread discussions have been partially read. This helps in making clearer if the number of unread posts is actually the total number of posts in the discussion or only part of it.

Visually, it could look like this (notice the dot on the left which means that the discussion was already opened in the past and that there are new posts to read):

What do you think? Could this be a core feature? Should I create a GH issue?

tolgaaaltas

matteocontrini Oh like Discourse, it would be useful.

ornanovitch

I like the idea !

May I try another approach, that I found more UX (I imagine it with a message on hover like "you have partially read the new messages") :

askvortsov

I like the feature idea! It's unlikely to make it into core anytime soon unless a community member submits a PR (leading up to stable and immediately beyond, our focus is fixing bugs and enabling extensions to do more), but it could be a really nice tweak to the design!

I'm not sure about the particular UX proposed above though: I feel like having the indicator on the left isn't too clear as to its purpose, it's too far from the rest of read-post-information. Perhaps the unread posts icon on the right could somehow be changed or use a different icon? Maybe bold and black text, but not filled in comment bubble?

JohnP

askvortsov Perhaps the unread posts icon on the right could somehow be changed or use a different icon? Maybe bold and black text, but not filled in comment bubble?

That makes a lot of sense.

ctml

askvortsov Perhaps the unread posts icon on the right could somehow be changed or use a different icon? Maybe bold and black text, but not filled in comment bubble?

I agree! Funny because I came to the same conclusion as I examined the screenshot as imo it's better if possible to modify the way something existing is displayed rather than add more clutter.. then scrolled down and saw you already suggested it 😄

matteocontrini

askvortsov I feel like having the indicator on the left isn't too clear as to its purpose

I think the aim was to replicate how iOS shows when an app is updated (see screenshot), although it's not the same thing and there can be better options of course 🙂

clarkwinkelmann

The data is definitely there for community extensions to play with.

I don't think we actually know how many new posts there are. The information available is: number of last read post, number of last reply. The number visible is computed client-side based on those two numbers.

So any custom extension using our javascript API could do something else with this information.

askvortsov

I was looking through old stuff, and looks like this topic has been around for a bit! https://discuss.flarum.org/d/2716-discussion-list-revamp

I have quite a few mixed feelings on this proposal; to be honest, I think I dislike most of it. But I do like the idea of more/alternative indicators for unread messages. It'd also be nice to scale this to mobile in some way: right now, that's just the number. Of course, the question is how 🤷 😃

SimonStorlSchulke

How is this such an unpopular feature request? I have a forum with 10 members which has been active for a week and people keep bugging me about it 😓 Specifically I have the Flarum Categories Extension and people want a way me to highlight categories with unread messages... but I see no easy way to add it to it.

GreXXL

This already exists in an extension: https://discuss.flarum.org/d/23066-who-read

clarkwinkelmann

GreXXL I'm not sure Who Read solves any of the concerns raised on this discussion.

A built-in "solution" if you are looking for new discussions is to change the sorting from "Latest" to "Newest". Then everything above the last discussion you remember reading will be new.

If your community has a need to follow new discussions as they appear, maybe you could benefit from Follow Tags https://discuss.flarum.org/d/20525-friendsofflarum-follow-tags Users who want could subscribe to get an email on new discussions.

Showing a visual indicator next to a discussion if it it has never been read at all should be very easy to do with a custom extension.

Showing an indicator in the tags or categories page is a bit more complex, it would require saving the date or ID of the last discussion read by every user under this tag as well as the same value for the newest discussion in every tag, so that the values can be compared at run time. Flarum already memorizes the last discussion with activity, but this cannot be re-used because that's based on the last reply, not whether the discussion is new.