Ideas. Standard Style Improvements.

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hanakin
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Re: Ideas. Standard Style Improvements.

Post by hanakin »

ok so did some tests with the above approach I mentioned. It's workable but it's not exactly straight forward. You have to theme the objects as they are loaded separately, although we would be doing that anyway. It's actually quite a fun experiment and pointed out some issues that needed fixing in the process.

see the code here https://github.com/hanakin/chameleon

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lazy loading with jump to is perfectly fine in my opinion
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Re: Ideas. Standard Style Improvements.

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I just fell in love! 😍
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Re: Ideas. Standard Style Improvements.

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Louis7777
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Re: Ideas. Standard Style Improvements.

Post by Louis7777 »

hanakin wrote: Tue Jan 22, 2019 5:30 am see the code here https://github.com/hanakin/chameleon

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I hope that we will never ever have a "load more" button like stupid YouTube and IMDb. :x It makes it impossible to navigate and discover older content. Pagination ftw!

With IMDb, for example, I used to quickly read reviews up until the 10th page (because the first pages are usually full of paid reviews so one needs to go deeper) and a few random ones beyond that to decide whether a movie was worth it. But now they have a stupid "load more" button that makes me say "f*ck it" after pressing it a couple of times, so I just don't read reviews anymore.

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Re: Ideas. Standard Style Improvements.

Post by 3Di »

What's the reason for quoting such a big image? :?

That's good for navigation!
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hanakin
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Re: Ideas. Standard Style Improvements.

Post by hanakin »

Louis7777 wrote: Sun Feb 03, 2019 12:01 pm I hope that we will never ever have a "load more" button like stupid YouTube and IMDb. :x It makes it impossible to navigate and discover older content. Pagination ftw!

With IMDb, for example, I used to quickly read reviews up until the 10th page (because the first pages are usually full of paid reviews so one needs to go deeper) and a few random ones beyond that to decide whether a movie was worth it. But now they have a stupid "load more" button that makes me say "f*ck it" after pressing it a couple of times, so I just don't read reviews anymore.
I do not agree also not sure if load more or just lazy loaded is best yet will have to wait to test that later, besides we have a jump to page feature which counters this and it will be a feature that will be configurable anyway.
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Louis7777
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Re: Ideas. Standard Style Improvements.

Post by Louis7777 »

hanakin wrote: Sun Feb 03, 2019 11:04 pm I do not agree also not sure if load more or just lazy loaded is best yet will have to wait to test that later, besides we have a jump to page feature which counters this and it will be a feature that will be configurable anyway.
Can you elaborate on why you think that "load more" is better than pagination? By "configurable" you mean that we'll be able to choose between the superior pagination and the "load more" crap in the settings?

Also, could it harm SEO by hiding content from bots?

If we'll be only left with a jump to page feature then it'd need a usability upgrade and a facelift to display the total number of pages.
3Di wrote: Sun Feb 03, 2019 12:24 pm That's good for navigation!
Why is it good and what's suddenly wrong with pagination?

Think of YouTube comments or IMDb reviews. Do you ever hit the "load more" button to see older discussion or reviews? Personally, I don't - and especially at YouTube's search results I always hope that the first top results are great otherwise I'm not going to scroll that much even if I'm really desperate! And how many times are you going to hit it before you become annoyed?

And what if you locate something that you'd like to revisit - perhaps to show it to someone else sitting next to you - but you didn't take the time to copy or bookmark? Press "load more" until you spot it, right? Instead of navigating to the specific page (i.e. depth) that you remember seeing it and maybe by checking on the dates of the latest replies because you happen to remember dates. Perhaps you'd prefer to hit a random page just to see the dates and then move backwards from there or try the page in the middle in a binary search manner. But I guess you prefer the sequential search for whatever reason.

I used to be excited about 3.3 and now I'm feeling like someone who is expecting a tasteless sequel. Because someone wants to remove smilies from PMs, another one wants to remove IP banning, now hanakin says no pagination but instead "load more", and I'm left wondering about what else is going to be missing from the final package whenever it arrives.

Just a loyal user's opinion and perspective guys...

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hanakin
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Re: Ideas. Standard Style Improvements.

Post by hanakin »

Louis7777 wrote: Mon Feb 04, 2019 4:22 am Think of YouTube comments or IMDb reviews. Do you ever hit the "load more" button to see older discussion or reviews? Personally, I don't - and especially at YouTube's search results I always hope that the first top results are great otherwise I'm not going to scroll that much even if I'm really desperate! And how many times are you going to hit it before you become annoyed?

And what if you locate something that you'd like to revisit - perhaps to show it to someone else sitting next to you - but you didn't take the time to copy or bookmark? Press "load more" until you spot it, right? Instead of navigating to the specific page (i.e. depth) that you remember seeing it and maybe by checking on the dates of the latest replies because you happen to remember dates. Perhaps you'd prefer to hit a random page just to see the dates and then move backwards from there or try the page in the middle in a binary search manner. But I guess you prefer the sequential search for whatever reason.
kind of making my point for me. but first I am not saying that we are going for a load more button for certain! That is there for now as a place holder until we get to integration testing to prevent footer avoidance. I do however feel that pagination is far from perfect. In fact it's very dated and cumbersome. Yes, it needs a huge UX facelift and so does jump to page which it will get. I am still working on all of it we are way early on These are just mock-ups nothing is hard-set.

As you say "do you ever really go that deep on google results? maybe the first two pages that's it." Same with forums really...probably even more so. Again not sure how the implementation will go...Maybe we choose a load more button that will only be a toggle to enable lazy loading the first time around. The concept is simple just keep scrolling which is a far better user experience for the majority of users. The way lazy loading works is no different than now it will still be built via pages based on set number of posts. It just prefetches the next set for the next page and loads them to continue scrolling. It truncates all but a set number of the previous posts in the process. You can still navigate to forum/page/5 for example to see the pages for that page. There are going to be several features to find the post/topic you want. Search will be overhauled and improved for one, jump to page will get a facelift as well, I currently working on something for that. You have sort and filter options to better find what you want which are getting a facelift. Not to mention adding a rating system, maybe hearting or faving...I have a lot of ideas for how you could solve the problem you are eluding too but it's not really a pagination issue but more a lack of other features issue. Think about any social platform, how do you get around the issue? Its because they have a fav, heart, rating, sharing system in place.

Everything you mentioned, in fact, is not really much better now as you put it you have to remember where you seen it. There are very few features to flag/or remember stuff and finding is not always easy. Its these features that need to improve! The fact that we use archaic pagination which is a very complicated and cumbersome process as opposed to straight lazy loading should be considered for simplification merits alone IMHO.
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Louis7777
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Re: Ideas. Standard Style Improvements.

Post by Louis7777 »

hanakin wrote: Mon Feb 04, 2019 8:47 am As you say "do you ever really go that deep on google results? maybe the first two pages that's it." Same with forums really...probably even more so. Again not sure how the implementation will go...

[...]

The fact that we use archaic pagination which is a very complicated and cumbersome process as opposed to straight lazy loading should be considered for simplification merits alone IMHO.
I'm glad that it's not a final decision. I don't understand why you think that pagination is complicated and cumbersome.

Anyway, I'll just use one more argument right below and I beg you to consider it.

Google results are one case where going deep is not what we'd usually want to do, alright. Forums too? Some, maybe.
However, forums can be anything. The community that hosts the forums can be anything too.
Going deeper and being able to do so easily certainly matters for many kinds of forums, and pagination can satisfy the navigational needs for all of them.
Is "load more" also appropriate for all kinds of forums? I don't think so. Thus, those kinds of forums need pagination.

In my opinion, "load more" can render useless many types of content.

Take YouTube comments, for example. On very popular YouTube videos will you ever see all the older discussions? No you won't, because at best you will scroll through the discussion for a few seconds before you realize that you don't want to go through infinite scrolling. Thus, old comments are rendered useless. Pity, because with the diversity of videos hosted on YouTube, old comments may contain useful pieces of information, instructions and tips. They can be entertaining too. And what if you can't read them all in one sitting? You better keep that browser tab open until you do, otherwise you won't go through scrolling again in order to touch the bottom! At least the YouTube devs were wise enough to finally make @mentions bold to stand out in comment replies after years and years of comment replies looking weird. It also took them a while to get the threaded comments right (well, almost) and to remove the Google+ madness, but then they removed pagination. Screw it, I'll just read the top comments.

Take YouTube search results, for example. They are not exactly like Google results where viewing the 1st and 2nd page is almost always satisfactory and sufficient (now I wonder why Google results don't have a "load more" button). I used to find lots of great videos by going deeper... well, until when there was a pagination at least. Now? Screw it. If the first results are not satisfactory I'm not going to scroll and scroll, because that clutters my screen and I can't delimit the content that I am viewing and it is annoying. I'm going to refine my search terms. So I'm really sorry smaller YouTubers - I may have missed your good content and I may never discover your channel!

Take IMDb reviews. I used to quickly scan the first pages, reading with a lot of suspicion and not taking the ratings seriously because there are too many paid reviews among them... and then I'd go deeper and deeper till the 10th page and then even deeper at random pages to make sure that people still write good comments about the movie. Then, earlier in 2018 they got rid of pagination and replaced it with a "load more" button and also narrowed the reviews' column. So now I stopped reading them. The navigation and the entire feature became useless!

P.S.: Let's be real. There's nothing wrong with the pagination usability and functionality. All these sites that implement "load more" are mainly doing it for the looks and trendiness, a cool button with a spinner, animations etc., because it's easier to think of a responsive design for a button that will fit nicely in your smartphone's screen. Also, perhaps they believe that their users are apes who are having trouble using pagination but won't have trouble interacting with a "load more" button which only requires a click to grasp the things it can do for them? A pagination can fit nicely too, and can look beautiful as well, but with a bit more effort.
Last edited by Louis7777 on Mon Feb 04, 2019 12:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Ideas. Standard Style Improvements.

Post by DavidIQ »

I'm assuming this isn't going to be apied to the actual topics, right?
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