Forum Discussion
Browsing conversations here is painful
If one simply is browsing the conversations where you have to repeatedly click on the Show More conversations a heck of a lot. What makes it more frustrating is that if you are several pages into the list of conversations and click on a particular one or on show more then you are shown that conversation in detail. If you want to continue to browse the remaining conversations and click on Edge's back button you are not sent back to where you were in the pages of conversation summaries but instead sent back up to the beginning of the list!
11 Replies
- I feel your pain Snowbound. I am having trouble tracking conversations as they occur. I will send a pointer to this thread to the site admins.
- Allen
Community Manager
Elliot Kirk Snowbound Deleted KoshyG tomscharbach
thank you all for your robust exchange of views on the community and how it works. We used to have the 'pagination' style view here in the community but users wanted the community feel more 'social network / yammer' like and so we implemented that kind of design.
What is interesting here is that since migration of MSDN, TechNet blogs and some google + groups to Tech Community we have members who are maybe more 'traditional' forum users.
Either way I will capture your feedback and see what we can do to make it easier for you.We used to have auto scroll but we had to turn it off because it meant users could never get to the Terms of Service link in the footer.
We used to have the 'pagination' style view here in the community but users wanted the community feel more 'social network / yammer' like and so we implemented that kind of design.
Whatever the design intent, the current iteration of this discussion board violates two of three basic website navigation principles: (1) allow users to back out using the back arrow; (2) when the back arrow is clicked, the user should be taken back one step, and successive clicks should take the user back step-by-step; and (3) allow users to the "top" (in this case a user choice of [Home - Microsoft Edge Insider - Discussions]) from any point.
Although I've run into a few instances where downlinks take the user in a sideways direction and returning to [Home - Microsoft Edge Insider - Discussions] is no longer available, this board otherwise allows users to return to the "top". But the back arrow doesn't function step-by-step; instead it returns the user to the "top" (in this case [Home - Microsoft Edge Insider - Discussions]. The board does not allow users to step back one step or step-by-step.
That makes it impossible (without resorting to a workaround) for users to work down the discussion board to a particular topic, read the discussion of that topic, and return to the point on the discussion board list at which the users dived into the particular discussion. The obvious workaround (opening the particular topic discussion in a new tab, then closing the new tab and returning to the parent tab when done with the particular discussion) does work, but that is, well, a workaround.
- Yes the whole techcommunity site seems extremely clunky.
I think it would be nice if more conversations were loaded once you reach the end of the page. It would make for a nice infinite scrolling style.
It could also be combined with opening threads in new tabs, that way the position is not lost.
_shellprompt1515 For a few hours the other day (I don't remember which) scrolling the mouse down to the end of the page automatically opened more conversations -- an "infinite scroll" as you describe it. I didn't think anything of it at the time, but the minute that behavior disappeared, I missed it.
- Yup that would be a sensible approach rather than to have to repeatedly click on show more conversations only to lose one's place after delving more into a conversation. Right now it makes browsing conversations a head-banging experience.
