I like this change. I’ve had a setting “category badge move” in the topic list previews plugin (TLP) for a while, which made the same move. Thankfully, it’s no longer necessary .
That said, @merefield is working on a setting for TLP that adds the category column back in for those who like it. Long live pluralism!
Love this change, and the extra horizontal space meant I could increase the font size of topic titles.
No extra vertical space consumed, as I already had preview images which gave extra height. Forum after change on left, (different forum) pre-change on right
Alright I wanted to share some CSS I used to bring this back closer in line with previous behavior. Similar to the one @LeoDavidson shared above but a couple differences:
Only modifies the topic list for large screen widths
Uses absolute positioning so that the categories appear aligned left
A bit better handling for long topic titles
(We have lots of other CSS customizations so the specific values may need to be tweaked for a default install! Screenshots below of the before / after on our forum.)
IMO this is best of both worlds — when viewing on a large screen / browser window, it takes advantage of the space and is much easier to read the topic titles. But categories is no longer a sortable column, so still a bit cleaner than before. On narrower widths it switches to categories displaying beneath topic titles, which makes sense for the smaller size.
I had the same idea with the responsive windows and the width of the category, that’s why I didn’t want to use the theme component.
I used @LeoDavidson css as a base so it’s a bit different of your work. But I noticed a little issue with the topic excerpt (it was put below the category name, not below the topic title), and since I didn’t want to hide it, I did some things here and there
Since we are in the spirit of sharing, here’s my css:
The old topic list was more readable. I usually do a quick visual scan of the topic list when I open the site to see if there’s anything new I need to read
With this change, more vertical space is taken up by each topic (because categories are moved under the title) making at top-to-bottom reading of the topic list more interrupted (little bits of color and info that wasn’t necessary before) and requiring me to scroll the page to see the same amount of information
I think the best solution would be to de-emphasize category names altogether. Use color to indicate what category a topic belongs to; omit full category name but give user an option to see it by hovering the thread title or opening the thread
I’ve removed the restriction from desktop entirely. Previously long category + subcategory names could break the layout fairly easily, with the new layout you really have to be looking to do it intentionally by naming a category with 50 W’s or something.
Was there a specific reason why the column was removed - specifically, is the team planning to utilise that space for something else?
If not, like many others, I preferred the older version.
Currently the page seems barren with the centre of the page very under utilised. It also impacts the feel of the page - what felt dynamic and interesting now feels somewhat boring and lacklustre. The category colour also served a very good useful purpose - a user can quickly scan down the page and see which topics they might be interested in because category colours are (if used correctly) part of the taxonomy system. They could easily be used as an indicator (particularly in the box style) while looking down the page.
As I mentioned in my post that was moved to a separate thread - this change in conjunction with something to utilise that space would be awesome, but without it, it is unfortunately not so great.
There are no behind the scenes plans. All the thoughts we’ve had about the change have already been discussed in this topic. The primary drivers behind the change are reducing the number of columns and increasing consistency of how titles and their metadata are displayed throughout the platform.
Why? Were the number of columns causing some sort of issue previously? (I don’t get to read all the threads here unfortunately so may have missed the discussion on this). If the fact that it was sortable was an issue, why not just remove that functionality?
I don’t think the goal needs to be attempting to make all platforms carbon copies of each other, but rather to maximise what each platform has to offer while ensuring that each platform is recognisable as part of the same family. This was not violated with the previous version - you could instantly tell it was Discourse.
Unfortunately the new version sacrifices the optimal user experience of the desktop version, needlessly. The fact that users of @Emerald_Teas’s forum started a thread thinking it was a bug is a good sign it is unfortunately not a desirable change.
On reflection, when you go to forum’s like @Emerald_Teas, do you still think it’s a good fit? Unfortunately the box style is pretty much unusable now, and the bar version isn’t working so well either.
We had chose to abandon the box style at SitePoint so that the topic lists could be more usable. Unfortunately, because the category badge is used in places other than topic lists the change caused a cascade of other issues that needed to be addressed. None that were impossible to “fix”, but some work was needed.
One of the benefits of the box style is that it has a larger area of background color. Because SitePoint has a black header and a white main, the box style provided for easier distinction where otherwise there would be insufficient contrast. We added a neutral border to help provide better recognition. Another problem was with the hamburger menu. Where prior to the changes in the menu’s display of categories was made “location memory” was possible. After changes were made so that categories changed position “color memory” was possible. Going from box style to bullet style means that more effort is needed to use the hamburger menu to navigate to categories.
I have been living with the change for a while now and I am getting used to it. Though my over all feeling is that UX took a hit for the sake of minimalizing the design of topic lists.
I think that if removing the category column will allow some to have a sidebar, the change will have enough positive and will be worth any negative. And even though a lot can be said for not having a lot of addons (plugins, theme components) it is possible to have the “classic” display.