Forum Discussion
Browsing conversations here is painful
- 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.
I'm not so sure politely labeling that user group as "traditional" is appropriate or on point with the original post. The techcommunity should just work. Swift and easy access to information and sharing, respectful and efficient use of a potential contributors time.Allen
I was super hopeful when I saw a flag for Scroll Anchor Serialization. Not the case here. I'm knee deep in the conversations, click one link away, hit "back" and I'm dropped back at the beginning. Please dumb it down for the "traditional" users. :)- Allen
First of all welcome to the community, I am sorry you took my comment to mean anything other than the community had grown over time and the audience for our community had changed and as a result the expectation of the community both on our UI and UX had evolved over time.
To be clear, I do not feel we need to dumb anything down for our users, if anything I think we need to become smarter about the design and the ux we employ, within the limits of the Lithium platform, to
ensure we deliver a rich and useful experience for all members.
I also certainly understand the view about opening a thread and then using the back button should take you back to the place in the list you were last looking at and not reload the feed. This is something I was speak about with our designers / devs to see what we can do to make it less painful.
Allen Smith
Tech Lead
Microsoft Tech Community
