Ideas. Standard Style Improvements.

[Arty]

I agree with Louis.

It works ok with content that is the same everywhere, but for example take a look at subcategories list there. So you scroll down to find thread you are looking for, then decide to navigate to subcategories. What happens? Scrolling up again goes through every single page, which might take a while before you can see subcategories.

Footer is unreachable. After scrolling for a while header is practically unreachable. Searching sucks because there is no actual indication of what was/wasn't loaded, so browser's search function needs to be refreshed constantly to see if new matches loaded.

I prefer classic layout without dynamic loading. Its clear, its precise and easy to navigate. That forum is disorganised dump of everything, not organised forum. Its different kind of software for different purpose.

[hanakin]

I agree with Louis.

It works ok with content that is the same everywhere, but for example take a look at subcategories list there. So you scroll down to find thread you are looking for, then decide to navigate to subcategories. What happens? Scrolling up again goes through every single page, which might take a while before you can see subcategories.

How so. You just hit go to top button? Takes all of a second. Not to mention the way the handle it is not exactly proper it can be done so that only 25 rows are in the dom at anytime.

Footer is unreachable. After scrolling for a while header is practically unreachable.

Already mentioned footer problem but it’s one that’s easily solvable. Not sure what you are referring to by header? It’s all easily reach able and you can always improve upon the sticky aspects.

Searching sucks because there is no actual indication of what was/wasn't loaded, so browser's search function needs to be refreshed constantly to see if new matches loaded.

Do not understand what you mean here by browsers search? You mean ctrl f? Please elaborate...

I prefer classic layout without dynamic loading. Its clear, its precise and easy to navigate. That forum is disorganised dump of everything, not organised forum. Its different kind of software for different purpose.

Opion, and Unrelated issue , not saying use that. There are plenty of things they got wrong. It’s only an example of something similar to what I am talking about. I was more just talking about th navigation as an example of an elegant alternative to paging.

[Arty]

You are right. I just tried that navigation in header, it makes everything simple. Its quite functional.

[DavidIQ]

I don't see any navigation in the header on my mobile, though I'm sure it's there on desktop. The infinite scroll makes the footer next to useless as is the case on any site that does this. Would need to have a good way to handle that on both desktop and mobile as there are some important functions at the bottom of the page that wouldn't be usable.

[Louis7777]

constructive criticism perhaps elaborate on what the issues are? keep in mind as I mentioned the implementation needs some work. they lack a jump to page feature which could easily be added. It sill uses pages and even dynamically updates the page count. Also again as I mentioned they need a sticky footer with this.

First of all, I don't appreciate having my scrollbar jumping up or down while I am mouse-scrolling or dragging the scrollbar. I also don't appreciate content that rapidly changes position while I am scrolling (my eyes are trained to lock on the content relatively to how quickly I scroll). What a nerve-racking experience! It makes me want to shoot my brains, honestly! I certainly don't want to replace my usual scrollbar navigation with having to click on tiny arrows at the header to go up and down, or clicking back-to-the-top buttons to go all the way up, because of the horrendous amount of height that the page gained due to infinite scrolling!

Secondly, sticky footer you say? So you're going to doom all themes into having sticky footers and perhaps headers too? I don't think that it is a good idea to lock precious screen height in favor of having a navigation that has no actual benefits.

Thirdly, I expect to see menu items and a search function at the header - not page navigation controls!

I don't see any navigation in the header on my mobile, though I'm sure it's there on desktop.

Because there isn't one. It would be a hassle to add one that will be pretty and user-friendly with so little space available. Plus, if it were there, it would prevent theme authors from trying to be creative with their theme's header.

[hanakin]

None of this is true. It’s totally doable to come up with an elegant navigation on mobile that is functional and works. Sticky does not mean always sticky or always the same. Yes the challenge is always customization but it’s primary nav . Since when is that ever been very customizable. There are issue that need be addressed. For one it does not have to as I have stated many times before auto load the next set allowing to reach the footer. But the contents should load without a page refresh not unlike infinite scrolling. The nav system though is more efficient than paging. Yes it does need some redesign to it.

[Mess]

@Louis7777

take a look at how nodebb handles paging. The design needs some work but essentially what I am refering too.

https://community.nodebb.org/category/3 ... evelopment

It scrolls but updates the dynamic nav in the header. The y also have an issue with reaching the footer which is usually solved by an inital load more button.

On desktop at least, that is actually pretty good.
I was skeptical, but it is a lot easier navigate. And jumping pages is easy from the top nav.
The challenge will be to solve the footer in an elegant, user friendly way.

[mrgoldy]

I do have to say that I like infinite scroll and hate it at the same time.
It reminds me of browsers' history list.
How I often navigate through forums is scroll, click on a topic / last post link, read it and then "Back". With these infinite scrolls, you end up at the top again and have to find where you were. I guess it's possible to keep track of where the user was but that's gonna require quite some (heavy) queries, I guess.

[hanakin]

So one idea is to not have it infinitely scroll at first. But to instead still require to use of the nav, to go to the next set first then uniformly scroll from there. This would allow you to see the footer initially the normal way then from there you still have the top and bottom nav jump buttons.

As for the knowing where you were we could change the center to show the top most post number currently on the screen after the first page. This could update on scroll. And easily be passed through on click. So let’s say we display 25 topics per page.

The next button loads the next 25 from the number currently shown on the nav. Scrolling would do the same it would take the displayed number and load 25 topics from that number. So if you can see let’s say 10 topics per page and the number showed 50, then it would load topics 50-74..

This means that you would always have 15 more topics to view. It would also have to load 5 extra to the top for buffer for scrolling up.

We could detect how many are on the screen at anytime in order to provide more granular functionality to Mobile/tablet basically based on the height of your browser.


We can easily solve the navigation issues on mobile as well by making the nav parallax sticky. Meaning that once to scroll past it it becomes sticky at the top of the screen. And reverts going the other direction.

[david63]

Whilst all of this "fancy" scrolling is admirable from a technical perspective, and possibly a challenge in development terms, I think that we are loosing sight at who all of this is aimed at - the end user, not developers, not extension/style creators, not board owners but the end user.

Changing how users navigate a board is one of the most contentious issues that are raised by the users when major changes are introduced.