Custom sidebar sections being tested on meta

[Canapin (Coin-coin le Canapin)]

@mattdm

Did it originally have counters?

Yes, it was changed to dots a while ago

Sidebar topic list links prefer unread and new over latest

@awesomerobot and @tgxworld just merged this pull request, which I think should address some of the above feedback: Now when using the default user preference, you see this: [Screenshot 2022-11-02 at 10.57.25 AM] [Screenshot 2022-11-02 at 10.57.29 AM] And when you use the “power user” preference, you see this: [Screenshot 2022-11-02 at 10.57.48 AM] [Screenshot 2022-11-02 at 10.57.38 AM] So, casual users have a bit less noise in their sidebar, and for everyone, what you see in the links …

You can change the setting here: https://meta.discourse.org/my/preferences/sidebar

[mattdm (Matthew Miller)]

Cool — then my suggestion stands: this would be nice as a per-custom-list-item config option rather than a global one.

[nathank (Nathan Kershaw)]

It doesn’t let me use /my/profile or similar - they need to be actual relative links. This is inconsistent with other bits of the UI (such as Watched Words Links)

[rahim123]

Thanks for the heads-up, in that case it wouldn’t work for the main usage case I was planning on using it for, I would need the /my/ links to work.

[Canapin (Coin-coin le Canapin)]

Two minor things:

• When we focus an input, as soon as we click elsewhere without entering anything, the input has an invalid state (red border).

• The icon list appears when we start typing in the icon selector. If we move the mouse cursor on an icon and continue to type, it clears the text we already typed, forcing us to re-write from the beginning. It can be slightly annoying when we want to complete the current text to find more similar icons.
  

• The red text on black or grey (selected) background on the WCAG Dark palette is hard to read:
  
  Same with a red button with black text:
  

[simon_tomes]

I very much welcome customisable sidebars. Nice one, @kris.kotlarek @awesomerobot @sam.

Moving the location of default sections with the ability to rename them would be an excellent start (for Admins).

[matenauta]

+1 and I suggest something related:

[details=“Little improvement on Community section”]
We would like to display more fields on “Community” section because people won’t trigger More and we have our leaderboard, groups and docs there (!)

Probably show 5 lines would be great for the majority (adding docs, leaderboard or rules).

[Crius]

Is there any ETA yet on these functionalities?

The sidebar is a great improvement over the dropdown imho but I find that the lack of ability to even customize the top links (adding new, last, etc. for example) greatly limit its usability.

[awesomerobot (Kris)]

We don’t have an ETA, but we’ve got a rough list of interrelated features defined that we’re working on… in no particular order:

• Ability for admins to edit the Community section (including section name)
• Users can reorder sidebar sections
• Users can reorder links within custom sections
• Users can show/hide (not just collapse) sidebar sections
• Users can edit their own Community section

[Crius]

Loving EVERY one of those as they cover basically everything the users have been asking for

Thank you for the update!

[Moin]

I just noticed that the alphabetical list of icons ends with “plug”. Are there no more icons or is the list cut at that position? I thought someting like share should be there.

[Stephane_Roy]

Hello

Is the “Custom sidebar sections” feature included in the latest beta version of Discourse (3.1.0.beta3) ?

Because there is information in “New Features” that suggests that…

[Jagster (Jakke Lehtonen)]

It came even earlier

Settings and enable custom sidebar sections.

[JammyDodger]

I can get it to bring up ‘question’ if I search, so I think the rest are in there somewhere:

I’m not sure why the list only has until ‘P’. The lookup list when creating a new badge cuts off at ‘C’ as well, so maybe there’s a limit?

[dodesz (Don)]

Hello,

I have noticed two minor issue with usage.

1. On mobile, the fields little misaligned.
   

   

2. If I use capital in search it won’t find the icon. This can be a problem on mobile because when the field in focus the keyboard will capitalize letters first.

Thank you This is a really great feature! Love it

[awesomerobot (Kris)]

Yeah there are hundreds of options, so the dropdown isn’t populated with them all. Maybe we could add a message or something at the bottom of menus like this to make it clear.

[mattdm (Matthew Miller)]

It seems hard to cram a good UI into that little box. Something like the emoji widget for picking font awesome icons would be… well, it would be nice, but of all the places I’d hope for UI improvements in Discourse…

[nathank (Nathan Kershaw)]

@kris.kotlarek

Site staff will be able to create a global section visible to all forum member.

I note that this is live (but experimental of course)! Brilliant! The OP could be updated to note this.

Also, it might be worth stating that it has the nice little globe only for @staff:

I discovered that only after I’d managed to hide it with CSS thinking that it would look silly for our regular users!

[mattdm (Matthew Miller)]

How does this work? Is it visible and editable by all staff? (Can it be restricted to admins only?)

[rahim123]

Are there any restrictions to the type of links that that can be added? For example:

• external links
• /my/activity/bookmarks
• /latest?order=activity&state=watching