Continuing the discussion from With the new right gutter, where should "Reply as Linked Topic" go?:
This would also be useful for selecting a whisper type reply per the earlier mock-up in the original topic.
12 Likes
It is a good idea and I like the mockup a lot, but:
- definiitely super-mega-power-user feature
- not discoverable (nor should it be, really, since it is a power user feature to begin with)
So the applicable audience that would benefit from this work is pretty small.
3 Likes
The current solution (clicking the 
icon) has some limits I’d like to bring up, as I don’t know that this proposal addresses.
- I can’t see how to select some text and use it to start a new thread.
- If a topic is closed, there’s no way to select text and use it in a reply.
If @erlend_sh’s suggestion would be allowed to work on both open & closed topics (forcing any reply to a New Topic or Message, that would help a lot.
2 Likes
The quote button (that shows on selection) could have a similar “expandability” to cover advanced cases.
2 Likes
Once a person has selected some text from an existing posts, what choices do we have for button placement that don’t involve clicking elsewhere, and losing the current selection?
An update re:
This is no long an issue… selecting text on a closed topic allows a reply button which automatically starts as a linked post 
So now it’s just a matter of: how important is it to the team (or other dev) to bring back reply-as-linked topic option… maybe with a second button?
3 Likes
Not very 
At the end of the day the button itself is a bit of a super-user feature. I’m uneasy about showing it so prominently next to Quote when Quote is what you want 99% of the time.
Most topic-linking happens incidentally by users linking manually to other topics.
3 Likes
This is pure gold though I do want to get to this:
Literally no downside to that (and whisper could be there as well for staff)
13 Likes
Minor suggestions: make the top item “Reply to post” instead of “Reply to post in topic”
Also: “Reply as new topic” might be more intuitive than “Reply as linked topic” (though, admittedly, the help text kinda takes care of that).
6 Likes
I should probably take it, it will be using select-kit
7 Likes
I started work on this one, quite excited about it:
As it’s using select-kit, it will also be very easy for plugins to add options in this menu.
15 Likes
Getting almost there, I have to tweak a little bit some actions but it’s working:
(link to a not flickering source: Cheesecake are awesome until they fall on the ground - Site Feedback - Discourse.webm - Google Drive)
7 Likes
This is now deployed as of:
https://github.com/discourse/discourse/commit/9923829402997c7af3e25121d6d3a345536f3884
Please let me know what you think.
@erlend_sh I didnt implement the “reply to selected post” feature as it’s not clear to me how it works/and what it brings. Could you elaborate please ?
14 Likes
Going to put this out as public feedback as well cause we have a lot of whispers here that are discussing it and I wanted to have something public.
The menu here needs to change from being “mixed toggle / mixed action” to 100% toggles.
It is mega surprising to have this post directly from that menu, my expectation is that a “blue” button will cause a post and having a context menu sub item post stuff is mega surprising.
All the thing there should do is toggle modes.
“Reply as new topic” toggles you current response into “new topic” mode.
And so on…
It also needs to remember previous context so you have “easy undo”
For example:
Reply to post #10
Click: reply as new topic
Click: reply to topic
Click: reply to post by @sam
We are back to replying to post #10
If the “blue” reply button had a downward triangle on it, I would expect it to post right away after you click the little triangle and select something, but I don’t feel we want that kind of UI.
6 Likes
Was talking of this with @erlend I get your point and will do it this way. Just explaining my initial position: this was a power feature mode so I wanted everything to be the fastest and not perfectly intuitive. Doing this it will be a mix of intuitive and fast which is fine to me.
7 Likes
Agree with all the feedback so far – one way you could make it faster (on keyboard at least) would be to have some shortcut to open the menu, or tab index after the compose text area. Then if you want fast:
Compose reply,
shortcut to open and focus reply type
downenter (select reply type)
ctrlenter (post)
2 Likes
One big pain though with keyboard shortcuts in the composer is that they require a lot of keyboard mushing eg ctrl alt f, it just ends up being so much work that I usually just reach for the mouse 
If you choose something easy odds are super high it clashes.
3 Likes
Fair point. That’s why the alternative suggestion was tab indexing. Similar workflow as before but:
Compose,
Tab to focus reply type
Arrows + enter to select reply type
Ctrl enter to post.
Not sure if that would complicate screen readers, but it’s a way around the hand cramping shortcuts.
1 Like
One small thing: would anyone be opposed to making this stand out slightly more as a button?
This (closer to our default button style)
instead of
love this feature, btw
9 Likes