I have a bit of an odd request: one of my team members would like to see a previous/next topic (sic!) buttons somewhere (and possibly, keyboard shortcuts, too). This partially comes from my attempts to create gallery-like topics (where it really makes sense, if you want to browse through the pictures), and from the fact that other forum software also has it (that’s the weaker argument, I know…).
I know that chances are small to include this in the main code, but if anyone could give me a little hint which data object I could access to create links from the HTML customize page, I’d be grateful!
Knowing that on a forum, the next message can change? I find it odd to want this behavior. As the next/prev message is not guaranteed to be in the same position when you were originally on the topic list… So you may be taken to a new topic, you may go to a different topic, click next and be back at the topic you started in…
Yeah, agreed. But the habitual workflow people have that I am trying to fit discourse into is about logging into discourse, reading and handling every single post one by one, then logging out and on to some other task. That’s what they want to be able to do.
Even if there is no “previous” button, to have a “read next new post” is something they look for and ask me about all the time.
I wonder how difficult this would be from a plugin perspective.
Read the topic-list.json, read the ID of the current topic the user is on, find that ID in the topic-list.json result, grab next item in the list to use for the Next button. Grab previous one for the Previous button…
I think this would make more sense to use this feature for posts that are currently considered ‘unread’ in the system. I would use that, greatly. Especially with a shortcut. It would make my reading flow easier so I don’t have to keep clicking back to the topic list to get another unread topic. Nor would I need to use NiftySplit to put all unread topics as new tabs in a new Chrome window.
Don’t know what you’re saying or implying. I have been opening my new/unread tabs in new windows and checking them against the suggested reading list below to make sure the suggested topic bug was fixed. When that bug was in effect, I kind of stopped using the suggested topics list and ignored it.
I do not understand the relationship you are expressing between an unordered topic list and a topic list which contains topics I have not entered into and considered unread by the system.
Ah, so you’re talking about what shows in Suggested Topics
AFAIK if you go to your Preferences and Mute every Category, and then only Watch the Topics you are interested in, only those will get the “unread” marker and none will ever be marked as “new”
I like that! I am going to try it and see how it goes to lower the level of ‘automated prompting’ I’m getting with new posts. Much appreciated.
(I made it a point to not use the word ‘noise’ in terms of describing new posts in this case (for me). None of it is ‘spam’, but too much feedback going on at once easily flusters me, which isn’t a problem with the software, it’s just me and I admit that setback for the sake of utmost clarity.)
EDIT: Too powerful and mutes too much. It erases any mentions of those muted categories (ergo their topics) in the ‘latest’ topic listing for everything I track, which I hope it wasn’t going to do. I just didn’t want to get ‘new’ notifications and be able to have a more fine-tuned list for ‘suggested topics’. It also only accounts for ‘watching’ and not ‘tracking’ which according to the user preferences cannot be auto-applied to a topic that I may enter or read for an extended period. Oh well.
…but an additional “next unread” would be nice, too…
The suggested topics aren’t really helpful here - what I would need would be a way to (programmatically) determine the next topic in the current category. Would that be feasible (from a user script)?
Uhm - the “next” link shows the error page, and “previous” jumps to another category. I was looking for an intra-category navigation - or through all unread posts that have accumulated while I was away…
