I dislike the new mobile topic header behavior in 2.2.0.beta5

[featheredtoast (Jeff Wong)]

@jomaxro

I’d love to see the avatar (with PM/notification icons) remain, and only have the search and hamburger menu hidden.

It’s taking a while to get used to, but I’m starting to feel the same here. I do really like the topic title being prevalent here, but I’m having some phantom limb pain from being unable to see my notifications. Search and hamburger I rarely open when viewing a topic. I’d be curious to hear how @orangeandblack5 uses those while within a topic.

Full height menus will be cool when they hit, but also bear in mind that the swipe in features will also be unavailable on iOS due to swipe-left being reserved for browser forward.

[jtbayly]

I’ve had it happen to me a bunch that I open up my phone and have no idea what I’m looking at, 40 posts deep, with no easy way to find the title and then get back to where I was. I also find the very slight scroll up to see the other header items to be both intuitive and already muscle-memory, requiring no thought in just a short time.

My only concern is notifications not being visible. Although generally I turn off notifications everywhere I can, (re: @tophee’s comment), as an admin I really want to see them.

@featheredtoast

that the swipe in features will also be unavailable on iOS

And that only increases my concern about notifications.

[ficuswhisperer]

@tophee

But that kind of dopamine pumping feature is not a good thing because it’s adictive (no offense, we’re all victim to this)

But this kind of gamification is one of the things Discourse seems to pride itself on. And in any event I have lots of PM conversations with friends on various boards and this makes that interaction more difficult.

@orangeandblack5

It makes the act of navigating between pages feel clunky where it should be elegant, and was up until today.

I couldn’t have said it better.

[sam (Sam Saffron)]

@orangeandblack5

or return to the home page

I am confused here, the logo is always visible.

One experiment we can look at adding is just showing the blue and green circles on the second row aligned to the right, there is plenty space for it.

[ficuswhisperer]

@jtbayly

I’ve had it happen to me a bunch that I open up my phone and have no idea what I’m looking at, 40 posts deep, with no easy way to find the title and then get back to where I was

You can press the post counter on the lower right corner to see the topic then tap the box to return to where you were.

[jtbayly]

Thanks. Learn something new every day. I do think I had learned that several times already, but it just isn’t intuitive to me. The title is at the top. So that’s where I look.

[ficuswhisperer]

Yeah, I fully agree it’s not intuitive.

[jomaxro (Joshua Rosenfeld)]

@sam

showing the blue and green circles on the second row

Let’s not forget red (I’m already guilty!). Flags are important as well, I’d love to see that in the experiment too.

[jtbayly]

I didn’t know red existed. I must still be a newby.

I really like this idea, though.

[sam (Sam Saffron)]

I see if I can whack an experiment theme component for this on Monday on BBS and here. I think it is legit to want the blue/red/green circles

[codinghorror (Jeff Atwood)]

The best idea is to “rez in” the other header at the time notifications arrive. Not sure if that is possible but it makes the most sense to me.

[sam (Sam Saffron)]

I worry it can get quite a bit flashy though if notifications are going crazy … granted it only impacts super power users but who knows.

I think it is super legit to always want the red circle, it is a super important mark for admins and the earlier they get it the better. Plus you want it there always so you never forget that there may be a fire going on right now.

[jtbayly]

I have another idea. Just leave the new one as it currently is, but only show it while scrolling and for a couple seconds after. Then fade back to the main header.

[codinghorror (Jeff Atwood)]

@sam

I worry it can get quite a bit flashy though if notifications are going crazy … granted it only impacts super power users but who knows.

You misunderstand me… once you get a notification, it switches back permanently until you scroll down some more. I think that’s best.

[sam (Sam Saffron)]

I follow, I mean … while you are scrolling and reading stuff can get flashy on sites like BBS where people are getting a gazzilion replies. Or … for example if I happen to be browsing on mobile when @zogstrip wakes up.

[jesus2099]

@orangeandblack5

Knowing what topic you are currently viewing is a problem I personally have never had, and I have been using Discourse daily for almost two years now.

With many post saying this, I’d like to say that not knowing / remembering which topic I was in was precisely the only inconvenience I had everyday with Discourse on mobile.

[codinghorror (Jeff Atwood)]

After living with it for a while, I do feel this is overall a much better default, however, I think it would be cool and useful if the other header pushed itself back on top when a notification arrived.

[david (David Taylor)]

How about only pushing back when a new type of notification appears? So going from 0 blue to 1 blue would trigger it, but subsequent blues would not. Similarly for green/red. That would deal with the @zogstrip issue Sam described.

[jomaxro (Joshua Rosenfeld)]

I dunno, changing the entire header because a notification appears seems excessive. I’d like to play with both options to see how they feel; there’s plenty of room to add indicators without removing the title from the header.

[jtbayly]

One problem with the indicator approach is that there’s nothing to click and no indication of how to get to what to click. It’s a call to action without any obvious action to take.