The discussion revolves around enhancing Discourse’s topic navigation by adding a feature to jump directly to the first unread post, improving user experience when returning to long or partially read topics. mcwumbly initially proposed adding “First Unread Post” and “Last Read Post” shortcuts to the progress bar popup, citing usability issues when users scroll up for context and lose their place. eviltrout expressed concern that too many buttons could clutter the interface, suggesting a cleaner solution. sam recommended delaying implementation until a custom scrollbar is built, which could visually indicate unread sections and offer more intuitive navigation. mcwumbly agreed with the custom scrollbar idea but emphasized the immediate need for a solution. Later, mcwumbly reopened the discussion, linking it to related topics and arguing that remembering the “First Unread” post (rather than “Last Read”) is more useful, especially for returning users. They also suggested that users should be able to choose between “Last Read” or “First Unread” as the remembered location. Others, like NateDahlia, proposed visual indicators like a “Back” button to help users reorient. chapoi suggested merging this feature request with similar ones to avoid redundancy. Overall, the community seeks a balance between functionality and interface simplicity, with custom scrollbars and smarter topic memory as potential long-term solutions.
Continuing the discussion from How should I disable automatic redirection to the Last reply？:
Maybe doing both of those is overkill… The first one seems more useful.
Here are a few mockups:
EDIT just found this old topic discussing some similar stuff:
I personally find all these confusing. I don’t want to end up with one of those interfaces that’s just really full of butons.
3 is cleaner but confusing as most of the time that field is pre-populated with the current post.
I think there is likely a better solution to this problem.
I personally think this work should be on hold till we implement a custom scrollbar.
A custom scroll bar has a ton of other advantages, it can use colors to denote areas that are unread, it can display month name or year to the left of the scrollbar as you scroll around. It can be virtual so it can encompass the full topic. It allows us to control scroll position without complex browser hacks.
Totally agree if there are plans to eventually do a custom scrollbar!
I’ve reopened this one as it came to mind again as an alternative solution to the problem being discussed in this other topic:
Maybe we should merge it then, cause it’s essentially the same feature request?