I find our current options for category styling a bit confusing. When I change the category style, I expect that category style to apply everywhere, unless otherwise specified. The fact that a subcategory index has a unique, hardcoded styling is unexpected.
I’d love to have category UI settings with this level of granularity:
desktop category page style
Categories only
Categories with featured topics
Categories and latest topics
None; just show Latest
desktop sub-category list style (replaces show subcategory list)
Inherit desktop category page style
Categories only
Categories with featured topics
Categories and latest topics
None; just show Latest
feature page style (i.e. configured in a category’s General settings)
Inherit desktop sub-category list style
Categories only
Categories with featured topics
Categories and latest topics
This would would allow us to set a more documentation-friendly styling for our howto category, while the rest remains focused on discussion.
(Also find it a bit weird that we only do this on desktop, as there’s definitely a way to do a mobile style layout for all of these options, but that’s a different topic.)
If I understand it, we’re talking about having the option to maintain the two-column split view while browsing categories, or to only show subcategories with no topics listed (in the case of “container” categories).