I reiterated on this and submitted:
4 Likes
I’m struggling with this. It moves away from our approach to simplifying the interface and it looks really messy.
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This was the original mockup. Note that the changes should be applicable to the ORIGINAL POSTER (OP) aka topic owner only.
I think we’re missing the button outline style as well here @awesomerobot which helps a fair bit.
1 Like
Looking back on this, thinking about it more, and seeing it live… I feel like I don’t really like any of the proposed solutions. I think @hawk’s right in that we’re adding complication, and I’m not sure there’s a clear benefit.
The root problem stated was “don’t show a checkbox button if I can’t uncheck it.” I’m not sure we’ve encountered actual problems or confusion because of this? Even so the simplest solution to that originally described problem would have been to just drop the box around the checkmark for users that can’t select/deselect the solution.
This is a good point too. How common is it to unmark a solution once it’s marked? 1 in 100? 1 in 1,000? Now we have a superfluous label for an uncommon situation.
I’m not sure it helps all that much. It does help avoid some of the spacing issues created in the current implementation by isolating the spacing issues…
(
vs the mockup
It also draws more attention to it, which doesn’t help with the complication complaint… plus it introduces a new style that doesn’t already exist in the post controls, and it’s a new button style that doesn’t feel valuable enough to me to justify adding.
We’ve already come this far, so I could fix some of the spacing issues and add the border to see how it feels…
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Yes, I think we should do whatever you think makes sense here. I trust your judgment. I am not tied to any of these solutions in any way.
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I just updated Discourse (via a rebuild) and immediately suspected the “Mark as solution” caused a visual regression. Mainly because the label is text outside the button (compared to the styling of the Reply button). +1 to address the spacing issue. 
Currently, for users capable of setting solutions, the panel looks very busy and tucked away for the very few instances a different ‘solved’ post should be chosen.
For this, I’d suggest removing the label to just an icon, like previous behaviour. Users tend to know about the solved button once they are introduced to the concept.
I have an alternate suggestion: Perhaps we could add a class to the “solved” post? This way, the theme can change the appearance of solved posts to separate presentation from the “Solved” button.
Plus, the post menu would maintain it’s simplicity of providing a row of user-clickable options (e.g. 
) whereas the text “Solution” or “Mark as solution” as it currently stands breaks that convention. I.e. logged out users (and non OP) currently see (but cannot click):
This would suggest circling back to the previous behaviour so the checkbox always appears on the left if logged in user has the ability to set a solution, avoiding any potential confusion if the user can or cannot mark/unmark the solved post.
A quick mock-up from OP/moderator perspective:
From perspective of other users:
This sounds a bit similar to what @chi suggested much earlier in this topic, and colouring the post background follows the idea of staff colours for important emphasis.
A solution could be conveyed by other means, like so:
3 Likes
For now I moved the text to be inside the button, which should fix the spacing issue
https://github.com/discourse/discourse-solved/commit/ad4bae2f4ddb9d002f269deec6a881db81f76875
3 Likes
The new design just went live on the site I use, and I agree with previous comments that it feels very noisy now. This is especially awkward on mobile since it goes across the whole page for every post. It takes up so much space, particularly for something that may not be relevant for many/most of your topics.
For what it’s worth, if something needed to change to stop confusion over whether you could select solutions, I like @awesomerobot’s latest suggestion to simply remove the box around the checkbox for users that can’t select solutions. (I’m not sure I’ve ever seen this confuse people though.)
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ok I’ve reverted the changes after living with them for a couple days… I think we may have just gone too far too quickly. Let’s start off with some smaller adjustments.
11 Likes
ok, so here are some smaller changes to start with:
- If I can accept/unaccept it’s the same button we have now (I did move the text to exist within the button)…
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If I can’t accept/unaccept, instead of showing a button just show the solved text with a checkmark. This makes it less button-like, which was the original request OP was making.
I also added a title attribute to this text that says “This is the accepted solution to this topic.” Our current method of having a button that doesn’t do anything is likely very confusing for anyone using a screen reader. This would clear that up significantly.
Here’s a PR for these changes:
https://github.com/discourse/discourse-solved/pull/80
In the above changes I haven’t made any additional updates for mobile… our layout there tends to be a little broken when you expand all the controls because there’s not enough space for everything (if you’re an admin for example).
As a next step I’d like to add a class when the post controls are expanded/collapsed so we can show/hide the “solved” text. Then in most cases everything will fit like so:
9 Likes
Merged these changes, as well as hiding the button label when the mobile controls are expanded
https://github.com/discourse/discourse-solved/commit/9550ced040b88d8e71cb5ff3a784bd932dcc4a91
6 Likes
As I mentioned elsewhere already, I am finding that the solved interface is too prominent. We like to use solved everywhere but not every post has a solution and the view of topics now looks cluttered and repetitive. Does anyone else share this concern? Could the interface be made less loud as it was previously, maybe as an admin setting?
Meanwhile the new interface is truncated on mobile. See screenshot of a post here on meta.
I think we just need to update the plugin here on Meta to solve this issue.
As of my post above from a month ago, we did revert a lot of the initial changes made here in favor of smaller iteration. I think (correct me if I’m wrong!) the only differences from what it used to be are:
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If you can’t pick a solution, the solved icon is just a checkmark and not a checkmark in a box.
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On mobile when the controls are expanded, the “Solution” text is hidden so all buttons can fit without awkward wrapping
6 Likes
I feel like the OP is mostly resolved these days… we amended the behavior in the plugin in the past year.
1 Like