Forums: Mobile Navigation vs. Larger Screen Navigation

Fri, 13 Jan 2023 00:11:15 -0500

customhubzilla@completehostingguide.com

Scott M. Stolz wrote the following post Fri, 13 Jan 2023 00:11:14 -0500

Forums: Mobile Navigation vs. Larger Screen Navigation

I have been playing around with the Forums layout, and the biggest challenge that I have right now is the mobile navigation. I decided to go with tabs to make it easier for people to navigate, but that takes up too much space on mobile. I was thinking of changing it to a drop down with a submit button for mobile, while keeping the tabs for tablets, laptops, and desktops.

Do you think the drop down menu (instead of the tabs) would work well for mobile or should I use another approach?

Image/photo

neuhub hubzilla forums

show all 9 Comments

Fri, 13 Jan 2023 00:29:33 -0500

Tejan Ausland

tejan@hubzilla.monster

You could just get rid of the notifications tab on mobile. Or you could change categories and notifications to icons on mobile. The tabs might still fit that way.

Fri, 13 Jan 2023 00:30:27 -0500

Tejan Ausland

tejan@hubzilla.monster

What's the difference between topics and posts?

Fri, 13 Jan 2023 00:52:27 -0500

Scott M. Stolz

scott@authorship.studio

@Tejan Ausland I might change this in the future, but "topics" only lists posts that have a title attached to them. Since some ActivityPub clients send a "summary" instead of "title," I might also include posts that have a summary but no title.

For the "posts" tab, it shows the default view that Hubzilla gives, which includes all of the posts, with the newest on top (even those without a title).

Because of how Hubzilla forum permissions work, forum posts are owned by the forum, not the author. This means that the admin of a forum can add a title to a post if they want it to appear on the topics list.

Fri, 13 Jan 2023 01:07:58 -0500

Tejan Ausland

tejan@hubzilla.monster

@Scott M. Stolz But most people post without titles.

Fri, 13 Jan 2023 01:32:08 -0500

Scott M. Stolz

scott@authorship.studio

@Tejan Ausland Posts without titles are an issue, but I think that by changing the interface, it will also change people's behaviors.

Most people will visit a forum at least once before they join or connect to it. Hopefully, they will notice that this forum is different, and that posts with titles are more prominently displayed than posts without titles.

And by giving a forum-like interface with more features, hopefully it will encourage people to use OpenWebAuth to post locally since they get an enhanced experience by doing so.

A big factor is the percentage of people posting from the forum's website (via local login or OpenWebAuth) versus the number of people posting from their own hub's interface. I would expect people posting locally would be more likely to include a title since they see why it is important.

We'll see what happens when this is finally released and real people start posting.

Fri, 13 Jan 2023 01:45:56 -0500

Witcraft (Hubzilla)

witcraft@hubzilla.fediversum.de

I think it is a common practice to change the layout tabs below each other instead of side-by-side in small screens. That would make them accessible quite quickly.

I love that you provide a BB interface for Hubzilla! I've seen that in LemmyBB, and was flashed that finally someone provides this interface. Timelines are well-suited for temporary content that you browse and forget, but for longer ongoing discussions, and looking up knowledge created in them, a systematic presentation with a feeling of "where" you are in an endless thread ("page 25" instead of "~4 Minutes scrolling down the screen") is something I have been dearly missing in modern social media formats! I like your approach to the GUI of Hubzilla the more I am seeing!

Regarding no title posts: In a BB, I tend to usually ignore all posts without a title or with a click bait title. If people do not take the time to explain in a few words why I should read it, it's not worth my time. That maye different in timeline-based communication (although I prefer titles there, too). I think a common practice to identifiy a thread in an overview is to display first few words of a post - unless it has a summary - unless it has a title (DisplayTitle = post title; if not present = post summary; if not present = first X characters of post).

@Tejan Ausland I mainly work with the notification tab, I would not get rid of it.

Fri, 13 Jan 2023 02:48:43 -0500

Scott M. Stolz

scott@authorship.studio

@Witcraft (Hubzilla)

I think it is a common practice to change the layout tabs below each other instead of side-by-side in small screens. That would make them accessible quite quickly.

The layout uses Bootstrap, so the tabs automatically wrap gracefully on mobile. It would take up less space than a vertical menu, unless I made it so that the menu started as collapsed until tapped on it. But a vertical menu would look better.

@Tejan Ausland

...you could change categories and notifications to icons on mobile. The tabs might still fit that way.

That might work. I'll have to test this.

Fri, 13 Jan 2023 03:13:35 -0500

Scott M. Stolz

scott@authorship.studio

@Witcraft (Hubzilla)

Regarding no title posts: In a BB, I tend to usually ignore all posts without a title or with a click bait title. If people do not take the time to explain in a few words why I should read it, it's not worth my time. That maye different in timeline-based communication (although I prefer titles there, too). I think a common practice to identifiy a thread in an overview is to display first few words of a post - unless it has a summary - unless it has a title (DisplayTitle = post title; if not present = post summary; if not present = first X characters of post).

The challenge is that Hubzilla stores forum posts in the database in a peculiar way. Instead of the first post of a thread being owned by the author, it is owned by the forum itself. It displays the user's post as a share which adds a bunch of extra bbcode tags that need to be parsed out. There is a long story about why it does this, but that is not important now. The important thing to know is that you can't just query the database and get the first x characters of the post. Maybe there is a function that does that, but I don't know what it is.

So, at least for the time being, only posts with titles and/or summaries will get displayed in the topics view.

Plus, I am of a similar mindset. If someone participating in a forum doesn't put in the effort to add a title, then the forum does not need to put in the effort of featuring their post. A lack of title (when posting to a forum) automatically makes it a lower quality post. People can still read it using the default Hubzilla timeline view. It just won't be featured in the topics view. It's one of the many reasons why I am including both views. It gives people choices on how they consume the content.

Fri, 13 Jan 2023 14:55:40 -0500

Scott M. Stolz

scott@authorship.studio

@Witcraft (Hubzilla)

I mainly work with the notification tab, I would not get rid of it.

I may have to rethink how I'm going to do the notifications though, because notifications are stored on the user's hub, not the forum, so only local accounts would have notifications.

Sorry, you have got no notifications at the moment...

{2} {3}

{4}
{5}

{10} {2}

Website

Network

Complete Hosting Guide

We provide concepts and step-by-step guides designed to help you implement technical solutions to achieve business objectives.

Complete Hosting Guide is reader-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Website

Network

Aside

User Menu

Network