Just updated and this change went live on our site. Am I the only one who feels things get a bit âcrowdedâ with a username, real name, and title all crunched together? (And different font face, weight style, colors too in the default ⌠just seems messy.)
Can we disable this feature later?
I think username at the bottom of avatar looks like more elegant, familiar and more readable, they are separated from post content.
And for me, 15 characters length more than enough for username like Twitter did.
I agree with @ahmadsoe. Not sure this change is better than what it was before⌠As I read through the posts now, it feels like I keep stumbling over each nameâŚ
To make it less âin the wayâ, maybe it could be dimmed more? Or even moved to the right, next to the timestamp?
Let me explain why, after seeing usernames-on-top for the first time at Hummingbird, over time I came to believe that this is a superior layout.
Name length has been a huge problem for us from the beginning. Even with 15 char max usernames, the same as Twitter, we can barely fit long/wide usernames in the left gutter. @sam came up with arcane splitting heuristics to get names to be on two lines that helped, but seemed awfully hacky.
The bigger you make the left gutter, the less room there is for everything else. And other than badges, which will be glyphs or images, there is nothing useful to put in the left gutter. So other than a little flourish at the top with the avatar and 1 or 2 lines of text, the left gutter is empty space the rest of the time. Some whitespace is good, sure, but a giant set of whitespace to accommodate the rare ultra-wide username MMMMMAXIMUM is not helping anyone.
Choosing and showing titles for some users exacerbates the problem (a little).
Enabling the optional display of long names for each user exacerbates the problem a lot.
Choosing intentionally short usernames (15 char max) like Twitter began to feel like a long term mistake I did not want cast in stone for V1. Sure, you want somewhat short unique names so the typing and display of them doesnât get unwieldy, but 15 chars gets a lot of pushback from communities because it is so short. I think something like 20 chars is much more realistic â and thereâs NO way we could do that with the left gutter name approach. We can barely get 15 chars to work!
Itâs even worse on expanded replies and in-reply-to since the width is even narrower there!
Trying the username-on-top layout on folksy felt very, very good and natural. I was surprised how much I liked the flow with the username on top. Maybe because thatâs how Twitter does it, and a bunch of other chat clients I use?
The more I think about it, the more I believe that there is just no question that username-on-top is the correct long term model for Discourse. It solves so, so many problems we had.
It makes a lot of sense. Clearly there are many benefits. I totally get it. I want to like it more than before. I just donât quite yet though.
Maybe its just a change Iâm not used to. Or maybe it will just need a little tweaking. Some ideas to consider on the âtweakingâ front:
dim the username a little more
remove the highlighting for moderators,
indicate that elsewhere (like a little icon or color chip near the avatar). keep the username / title area monochrome.
These are just ideas⌠not sure if theyâre good ideas or not.
In any case, sounds like thereâs no good reason to turn back!
I was also very hesitant at first, but I decided to give it some time before speaking up. And the more I look at it, the more I like it. This would also allow me to enable showing real names for posters who opt-in, a personal touch Iâve always been fond of on my own forum.
I very much agree with the removal of the highlighted names though. It has become an annoying attention-grabber that keeps pulling my eyes back towards the top when Iâm trying to read a post.
Just saying, when I first noticed this new design without being aware that it was changing, my first thought was that it was part of the post text itself, rather than being part of the user information for the post because there is nothing that indicates it isnât slightly bolded text in the first line of the text.
And thatâs the same thing the average new user is going to think.
Sure, people will figure it out after browsing around.
How about the name getting bolder instead of bold?
I too find the names on top a bit âoffâ, most likely from having seen them at the side so many times for so many years. Just seems to me thatâs the âde factoâ place for them and I expect them to be there.
But I can see the rationale for moving them. Allows for more room for the content, and after all, I imagine most visitors are more interested in seeing the actual content the post contains rather than âbioâ stuff next to every post and wasted white space.
