Topic on Talk:Structured Discussions

Front end refresh feedback

83
Summary by Jay8g

This thread is for feedback for the front end refresh, which went live Thursday July 3rd.

Jay8g (talkcontribs)
Jay8g (talkcontribs)

The preview message doesn't go away when you add a thread.

Jay8g (talkcontribs)

Previewing a topic summary returns a warning with the message "fail".

Jay8g (talkcontribs)

When you preview a new topic, the title doesn't preview.

Mmullie (WMF) (talkcontribs)

Jay8g: For the title, it's pretty pointless to preview, since it doesn't support wikitext (it will be displayed as-is).

But I understand how that is indeed confusing ;)

Quiddity (WMF) (talkcontribs)

It's useful for newcomers to Flow, so that they can see any wikimarkup in a Topic Title will be rendered as plaintext.

Tracked as bugzilla:68315

Jay8g (talkcontribs)

While I feel the "Edited [time]" text is better than the pencil icon, I feel it should link to the diff like the icon did.

Jay8g (talkcontribs)

Hidden topics take up way too much space. See Talk:Search for how annoying this is.

DannyH (WMF) (talkcontribs)

Jay8g: Yeah, I want to figure out something different to do with hidden topics. For one thing, they're not even hidden; they're mostly just drawing a reader's attention and inviting you to click and see the horrible thing that was supposed to be hidden. This isn't at the top of my list of things to fix, but it's on the list for sure.

Quiddity (WMF) (talkcontribs)
Jay8g (talkcontribs)

The max width is even smaller now. I'm not sure if this was intentional, but it is to the point that it is even annoying on my small screen, so it's probably really annoying for people with larger (normal-sized) screens.

Jay8g (talkcontribs)

When you preview a reply, I feel your username should be shown to provide context, make it look like a real post, and separate it from the post above.

DannyH (WMF) (talkcontribs)

Jay8g: This is one that we're working on -- we've got a new design for it.

Jay8g (talkcontribs)

If you cancel when summarizing (but not when closing), the box does not go away. If you then go to close it, you get 2 boxes.

Jay8g (talkcontribs)

Hidden comments (example) still display (aren't collapsed).

Jay8g (talkcontribs)

The preview button shows up with a box around it (like the reply button) before typing, despite being a "quiet" button normally.

Mmullie (WMF) (talkcontribs)

Jay8g: Where exactly is that? When I click to reply to your post, Preview looks good to me.

Mmullie (WMF) (talkcontribs)

Mlitn: Nevermind; I just noticed you probably meant the preview button on a topic-level reply!

Jay8g (talkcontribs)

Mlitn: Yes. (This shows an issue with replies to posts: you can save them with no real content (not allowed in topic-level posts)).

Quiddity (WMF) (talkcontribs)
Jay8g (talkcontribs)

This also applies when starting a new topic.

SPage (WMF) (talkcontribs)

Jay8g: this got fixed later in July.

Jay8g (talkcontribs)

I don't think "submit the form" is good wording in the preview message. "Click _____", like in the fine print, would work better.

Jay8g (talkcontribs)

When you click the preview button, the preview/keep editing button stays dark blue until you click something else.

Jay8g (talkcontribs)

When you hit the keep editing button, the focus should shift back into the edit box.

Quiddity (WMF) (talkcontribs)

Jay8g, much much thanks for this. You're amazing. I'll start filing bugs.

Jay8g (talkcontribs)

The header line "____ started this topic and there was(were) ___ other participant(s)" seems a bit wordy.

Quiddity (WMF) (talkcontribs)

The plan is to make it a required step to add content in the first post, along with the Title itself - so the topic creator will always be the first poster - obviating the need for the first part of his header line.

They're looking into other ways of reducing the size of the TopicTitleBar - it's currently filled with a lot of metadata, partially just to demonstrate the kinds of interesting and potentially useful things that can be done with Flow and structured discussions.

(I'm urging them abstractly towards the goal of "a simple default, with optional layers of info for the powerusers who want to be deluged with metadata (like me)". More specific suggestions, would be welcome. :)

DannyH (WMF) (talkcontribs)

Yeah, thank you very much for this list! I can't believe I didn't check bulleted lists. This is incredibly helpful.

Jay8g (talkcontribs)

Certain special characters show up wrong in the reply to topic box, like in this topic. Interestingly, this didn't show up until I refreshed the page (not immediately after posting).

Jay8g (talkcontribs)

I really liked the contributions link being directly on the discussion page so I didn't have to use popups or click on the username to get to the user's contributions page. Many users, including myself, have customized their signatures to include a contributions link, so the lack of this could make no-custom-signature pushback even worse.

Jay8g (talkcontribs)

All talk pages are shown as red links and all user pages are shown as blue links, regardless of their actual status.

Jay8g (talkcontribs)

IPs' comments have a link to their user pages, despite them virtually never having user pages. Wikitext signatures and the old version of Flow linked to their contributions pages.

Jay8g (talkcontribs)

Why is there a tooltip over usernames that simply shows the same username? It is quite annoying, especially for users with long names. I would understand this if the planned feature to allow customization of signatures/display usernames was implemented, but it is just annoying now.

124.180.202.60 (talkcontribs)

Jay8g: In addition to this, why is it using a custom tooltip, instead of the native browser tooltip? The tooltip is upside down as well, which covers the text in the post. And the text in the tooltip has a drop-shadow that makes it look all blurry and barely readable.

Quiddity (WMF) (talkcontribs)

We do have tooltips for all internal links in mediawiki. I'll file a bug to recommend using that style and wording, instead of this custom style. bugzilla:67643

Jay8g (talkcontribs)

Replying to moderated topics works. I really don't think you should be able to reply to moderated topics. Replying to closed topics gives you a useful error message upon save, which is good, but I think that either the reply buttons should be removed (or disabled) or an error message should be shown upon clicking reply (instead of the reply box) instead of after the person has typed a reply. (This also applies to moderated topics.)

Jay8g (talkcontribs)

The hide and unhide boxes' text is small compared to the rest of Flow.

Jay8g (talkcontribs)

The unhide button in the unhide box has no text, it is just a small green button.

Jay8g (talkcontribs)

The hide and unhide boxes always appear awkwardly in the lower right hand corner of the screen, not the center.

124.180.202.60 (talkcontribs)

When you submit your post, the timestamp says "-3 seconds ago".

Jay8g (talkcontribs)

124.180.202.60: I don't see this. (I always see "11 seconds ago".)

124.180.202.60 (talkcontribs)

Jay8g: It probably depends on how long it takes to save the edit. I saw -3 for every edit I made here.

124.180.202.60 (talkcontribs)

124.180.202.60: That time I saw -5.

Jay8g (talkcontribs)

Going back to the "just now" from the old version (or something similar) seems logical for anything less than one minute.

Quiddity (WMF) (talkcontribs)
124.180.202.60 (talkcontribs)

The "recent active topics" setting is not saved at all, so must be set every time a board is viewed. In addition, the drop-down displays the current setting in darker text than the other settings, as if they are disabled.

The drop-down also doesn't close when clicking else where in the page.

Jay8g (talkcontribs)

124.180.202.60: It's saved it for me, even across pages, so I guess this is an unregistered user issue.

Jay8g (talkcontribs)

The ability to reverse the sorting options (to see the oldest topics) would be useful.

Jay8g (talkcontribs)

The edit header text box is different from the others: it has the blue glow active style (not the newer blue bar style) and different font. It is also way too small.

Jay8g (talkcontribs)

I don't think that closed topics should be displayed the same way as moderated topics. I think that they should look the same as active topics, but be collapsed by default. This is because moderation and closing are addressing different issues: moderation is for stuff we don't want, while closing is for good discussions that are just over.

Quiddity (WMF) (talkcontribs)
Jay8g (talkcontribs)

In "small topics view", the number of comments icon sometimes overlaps the title (example) or the topic summary (example).

Jay8g (talkcontribs)

Moderation probably shouldn't restart a topic's "active" time.

TheDJ (talkcontribs)

Why is the tooltip semi-transparent ? I really don't like that.

TheDJ (talkcontribs)

The collapsing of topics.. I don't know. When I hover a title of a topic, it blurs the contents of the topic. This is supposed to indicate to me that the post is about to collapse ? It just distracts my attention back to the content, which seems counter intuitive.

What about an approach like in this: http://tweakers.net/nieuws/97184/youtube-opent-samen-met-music-vault-grote-bibliotheek-met-liveopnames.html#reacties comments system. They use an arrow on the side of the topic to indicate collapsing, only shown when a topic is hovered, and they even have -+ hover symbols per post to show/hide replies. It seems much more intuitive to me (though per post, might be a bit too much for our usages and counterintuitive to Wiki culture).

Quiddity (WMF) (talkcontribs)

TheDJ: Hmm, I'm only seeing a slight drop-shadow effect on the TopicTitleBar when I hover over it. See one vs two. Maybe this is a browser-quirk, what are you using again? (Or possibly I'm misunderstanding what you're describing, it is midnight.. >.> )

TheDJ (talkcontribs)

Quiddity (WMF): The effect I see is caused by:

.flow-topic-titlebar:hover + .flow-post {
    opacity:.85
}
TheDJ (talkcontribs)

TheDJ: ah, I see that Resourceloader modules don't work yet :)

Quiddity (WMF) (talkcontribs)

Tracked as bugzilla:68175 (opacity), and bugzilla:57159 (syntax highlighter (but possibly to be expanded to cover ResourceLoader)). Thanks :)

TheDJ (talkcontribs)

Preview: I would put a green left border on the preview in connection with that tooltip. To better contextualize the part that is being previewed. That also seems to align with the blue focused state of the text area.

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