I didn’t want to show the “Latest” column to our users,because we have many others parts to answer specific questions,so i think the “Latest” column will undermine the value of the whole page…
The entire point of this exercise is that arbitrarily slicing recent topics by category, as the old categories page did, is really confusing. If you want to add that back in, you are free to build it as a plugin, if you like.
Okay I understand and agree with it. But if we are not going to display recent topics by category then displaying all recent topics in separate column (like current categories page) also no need I think.
I think that leaving out the category color border makes the page read better as two columns, otherwise my eye is wanting to read the whole page as a table.
This is one of those cases where some user behaviour data could really come in handy. On sites where the /categories page is heavily used (usually because it’s the default front page), what is the most common next step?
/c/* (user drills into a category)
/t/* (user jumps directly into a topic)
/latest
other
I’d love to know the stats for this on sites like twittercommunity.com and community.imgur.com, as they’re using /categories as their front page. Could be a very good before/after metric when we launch the redesigned category page.
In theory, I really like it; the layout is nice and clean.
In practice, I found it very confusing, because there is not enough visual distinction between the two parts to say immediately that I’m looking at two separate and unconnected lists. I was expecting “latest” to show latest in each category (and yes, I had read this topic, but that is still how my brain interpreted the page).
Nitpicky and a poweruser case only, but would it make sense for j/k shortcuts to work in the redesigned categories page, on some panel on that page?
Also, this is starting to look more and more like the project is converging on different home page panels per device - You’re dangerously close to having “latest” home on mobile and “categories + latest” home on larger media…
Remember that virtually identical data is displayed on old and new categories page. The only real difference is, the latest category topics shown are no longer awkwardly divided by category.
edit: there was a serious regression on mobile categories, @zogstrip will look at it as soon as he can
I am in the process of prototyping how one “traditional” board can be migrated to Discourse. One of my biggest stumbling blocks is the “first screen experience” that people see when they land. The two column layout is a huge improvement in my opinion.
I noticed that there is a deal of duplication on the new meta categories page (see picture): there are two mentions of categories and latest each, this strikes me as confusing. I think for my forum, I’d just remove the whole menu bar on the top on the home page.
I’d love a bit more possibility to tinker, e.g., hide the post count column. I am sure this is not the first time you hear this.
The current Category page has never worked with j/k shortcuts, so as long as the existing “Latest” page remains, we haven’t actually lost anything.
I agree it would be nice to have j/knavigation on the categories page, but I disagree that it’s “nitpicky and a poweruser case only”; it’s an accessibility issue.
posts 2 and 4.
