How difficult would it be to make the Discourse UI more like Flarum?

[oshyan (Oshyan Greene)]

@GVG

at most forums-communities users prefer to communicate at MANY forums Categories. Thus when Discourse add this Dropdown Categories list as some kind of navigation improvement, Flarum make it better as easy&always accessible menu. What is a specially bad that Discourse Dropdown Categories does not support nor Ctrl+Click, nor RightClick+“Open in new window” in-browser’s actions. At classic using case when active user or admin/mods return to forum - they want to open 2-4 favorite Categories for monitoring when any new topic will appear at them - but with Discourse Dropdown Categories it’s impossible. With Discourse Dropdown Categories list user must choose and navigate Categories one-be-one and with a such method user can just forget to explore some Category, or will jump over Categories like the easter bunny, etc. Also always visible Categories can help for better topics separation on new topics creation according to the meaning - because user will see all of them thus will not be lazy to search the proper one.

I have to agree with this point, and I’ve always found the Discourse category switcher to be annoying and limiting. It hurts discoverability for new users, and annoys (some) power users (like me). Ironically a dropdown does seem to be a good idea on mobile for accessing categories quickly, and yet it’s not available on the front page on mobile (yet): Category Dropdown in Mobile View - #10 by renato

I honestly think the dropdown is the wrong solution for the understandable and real problem you (@awesomerobot ) raised: dealing with lots of categories. With the ever-increasing screen sizes and resolutions of desktop displays, why not seriously reconsider a persistent sidebar? It could have a simple, collapsible “tree” view, a classic UI paradigm that has been used for ages. Or accordion-style sections (like “panels” in many desktop apps, e.g. Lightroom), or probably a number of other possibilities. The dropdown is really the best idea the team had? Maybe I should open a separate topic about this… (please let me know if you think so)