Browsing latest topics with a button within the topic you're currently reading

Hi, I’d like to recommend a feature,

A feature that allows users to go on to the following topic that’s in the same tag or category while still being on the topic they’re currently viewing. This way users don’t have to go back every time they want to view the following topics.

USES: This will be incredibly useful for casual categories/tags, such as memes. You could keep viewing memes without any mechanical disruption to the user experience. Reddit is an example of this.

Example of where an arrow could be placed for this, (excuse my abysmal paint):

Example

2 Likes

That would be useful for my forum too.

It has been suggested before:

1 Like

This already exists, turn on the site setting that limits suggested topics to the same category you are already on.

I understand your response, however, could there be a way of swiping right or left on a topic to get to the next one? I truly believe this would be an incredible quality-of-life feature that users will appreciate.

1 Like

It is funny that you ask, @erlend_sh recently proposed such a feature and it now exists… however, it is a keyboard shortcut:

5 Likes

Sweet! A few questions rise:

  1. How can I change the keyboard shortcut to a single key that isn’t being used rather than a combo of ‘g s’ seeing that this will be used often?

  2. Could we get a simple arrow at the top of a topic that will redirect you to the following post?

  3. Important: On mobile, could there be a swipe function where you just swipe the screen right to go the next topic or left to go to the previous topic?

How would that work since those gestures are already allocated to browser forward/back on iOS, and expanding side panels on Android?

Swiping could be initiated from the middle of the screen, rather than the far sides. This does not trigger side panels on Android or iOS/Safari. Just tested it on both operating systems.

This sort of swiping from the center to navigate already exists on some applications, so it should work out.

I think swiping on the title bar would make more sense and have less risk of causing disorientation. It would look something like this mid-swipe:

discourse-slide-next

5 Likes

Clever proposal, I like the idea. Only possible QoL hindrance could be to users that have tall, big smartphones which happens to be a huge portion of people. Reaching up to the title with your thumb often to browse to following latest topics may displease that demographic of users.

Very tricky from a performance standpoint, we don’t know what the next topic will be when swiping, suggested may not even be loaded.

3 Likes

Maybe instead of showing the content while the swiping gesture is going on, it can display a placeholder icon until the animation/gesture is fully done, then proceed to load the content.

I am also looking for this feature to swipe the screen to left or right to open next/previous post in the same category only. This is a very common and I was hoping I can get it with Discourse. You said it is already implemented, but I couldn’t get this to work on mobile phone. Button next, or previous would be also OK, but I think it should be both sweeping and buttons.