How do I get to the 'last post' in a thread?

RE: How do I get to the 'last post' in a thread?

stuartw — Wed, 05 Nov 2014 23:06:49 GMT

OK terrible perhaps is an exaggeration but with the blue/green banner filing the screen it doesn't look good.

RE: How do I get to the 'last post' in a thread?

Phil Chouinard — Wed, 05 Nov 2014 21:22:00 GMT

Thanks for your opinion. Although this is veering off-topic, I actually think the site looks pretty decent on mobile platforms. Not perfect, but usable with a few things here and there that we have identified as needing to be looked into.

RE: How do I get to the 'last post' in a thread?

stuartw — Wed, 05 Nov 2014 21:16:08 GMT

[quote user="Phil Chouinard - Bentley"]

We know that more and more access will be on non-Windows, "mobile", and will look at testing on wider platforms accordingly.

[/quote]

That would explain why the site looks terrible on my mobile and tab! Definitely need more testing.

RE: How do I get to the 'last post' in a thread?

Phil Chouinard — Wed, 05 Nov 2014 20:45:24 GMT

[quote user="dshaw"]

Seems like it is then working on other browsers- so wider testing may be needed

[/quote]

Just wanted to point out percentages of some of the browsers (on various OSes) used to visit Bentley Communities in 2014:

Internet Explorer: 44.3%
Chrome: 35.7%
Firefox: 15%
Safari: 3.4%
Opera: 0.5%

There are other ones, too, which is why those percentages do not add up to 100%, but I wanted to provide some scale of where browser use stands. This is not meant to disparage any of them, only to identify what we are looking at for prioritization. We know that more and more access will be on non-Windows, "mobile", and will look at testing on wider platforms accordingly.

RE: How do I get to the 'last post' in a thread?

Phil Chouinard — Tue, 04 Nov 2014 16:50:11 GMT

[quote user="Yvonne Veltman"]

is this [put in a narrow column to one side of the application window] a user setting? If so, where can I change it to 'a narrow column (etc)'?

[/quote]

This is a "page layout" for each application -- there are currently well over a hundred of these, noting the difference between community homepages, forum lists, forum thread lists, forum threads, blog lists, blogs, wikis, wiki lists, etc. So each one would have to be configured to account for this. As mentioned previously (in other similar discussions), we are looking at the possibility of changing things to work better, but the results may actually not work out at all.

[quote user="Yvonne Veltman"]

Some of the articles are really old(> 5 years), and might concern problems that no longer exist, solutions that no longer work, etc. So relevancy is not always the case. It would help if each item showed a date of either start of the question or last reply.

[/quote]

As you might expect, relevancy and chronological order are mutually exclusive of each other. Sorting related and recommended content by date does have merit, though, so that is something that will be looked into.

[quote user="Yvonne Veltman"]

There is a lot of white space and much too large font; on my 15" notebook not very inviting to browse...

[/quote]

Although a bit off-topic from the original topic in this thread, the trend on web sites such as Communities is more towards "lighter", more open presentation. We do recognize that things can always "be better", though, and are looking at ways to doing that (as subjective as that often is :)

RE: How do I get to the 'last post' in a thread?

fostertom — Tue, 04 Nov 2014 16:21:04 GMT

For me, click-on-date works (in Ffox) to take me to end of latest post, not to end of Related and Recommended.
But I too would like to know how to move the latter to side column.

RE: How do I get to the 'last post' in a thread?

stuartw — Tue, 04 Nov 2014 11:33:55 GMT

[quote user="Yvonne Veltman"]
2. There is a lot of white space and much too large font; on my 15" notebook not very inviting to browse...

[/quote]

There is also too much green and blue of the home page which fills my phone and tab screen.

RE: How do I get to the 'last post' in a thread?

Yvonne Veltman — Tue, 04 Nov 2014 10:46:40 GMT

Phil writes: The latter can either be put in a narrow column to one side of the application window or at the bottom of the content.
My question: is this a user setting? If so, where can I change it to 'a narrow column (etc)'?

Phil writes:Although where it should appear is subjective, the information it includes is exactly as its name indicates... related and recommended. It has been my experience over the years that static (and otherwise non-descriptive, generic) hyperlinks are most often not clicked on. Given the relevancy (and importance) of the content these things present, we are planning to keep them enabled and work on improving their presentation.

My remarks:
1. Some of the articles are really old(> 5 years), and might concern problems that no longer exist, solutions that no longer work, etc. So relevancy is not always the case. It would help if each item showed a date of either start of the question or last reply.
2. There is a lot of white space and much too large font; on my 15" notebook not very inviting to browse...

RE: How do I get to the 'last post' in a thread?

dshaw — Mon, 03 Nov 2014 10:57:55 GMT

Under this post there is a related section of threads (and sometimes there is also a recommended section). When I click on the last post date i am left at either of these sections and need to scroll upwards.

I am using Safari on OS X (I have not yet tested this on IE on Win7 at work or Safari on iOS).

Seems like it is then working on other browsers- so wider testing may be needed

RE: How do I get to the 'last post' in a thread?

Phil Chouinard — Mon, 03 Nov 2014 10:11:43 GMT

[quote user="dshaw"]

The click on date to get to the last post is welcome- but there is still scrolling to do as all I get are those annoying recommended and related lists

[/quote]

Not quite sure I am following what you describe... selecting the link on the date of the last post should get you to the last post without scrolling, not the Recommended or Related content -- that will appear below the thread list. At least that is how I see that using the current released versions of Chrome, Firefox, and IE. If you are seeing something different, then more details would be needed to understand what to look at to figure out what needs to be sorted.

[quote user="dshaw"]

recommended and related lists- can these be turned off? (or how about just a button to click for each- See Related Threads and See recommended Threads and let me choose when to look at them)

[/quote]

The Related/Recommended content "widget" on this site has two presentation modes -- slider and list. For the former, that "slides into view" every time you scroll towards the bottom of something (e.g. forum thread, wiki article, blog article, etc.) That's how it was configured by default, but was getting in the way, so was switched to "list presentation mode". The latter can either be put in a narrow column to one side of the application window or at the bottom of the content. Although where it should appear is subjective, the information it includes is exactly as its name indicates... related and recommended. It has been my experience over the years that static (and otherwise non-descriptive, generic) hyperlinks are most often not clicked on. Given the relevancy (and importance) of the content these things present, we are planning to keep them enabled and work on improving their presentation.

RE: How do I get to the 'last post' in a thread?

dshaw — Mon, 03 Nov 2014 08:50:16 GMT

The click on date to get to the last post is welcome- but there is still scrolling to do as all I get are those annoying recommended and related lists- can these be turned off? (or how about just a button to click for each- See Related Threads and See recommended Threads and let me choose when to look at them)
All this information being dished up whether I want it or not is annoying (I get that it is an attempt to be helpful- but let me decide).

RE: How do I get to the 'last post' in a thread?

fostertom — Wed, 22 Oct 2014 15:25:36 GMT

No prob

RE: How do I get to the 'last post' in a thread?

Phil Chouinard — Wed, 22 Oct 2014 15:17:51 GMT

That's a much tougher nut to crack, mainly because there isn't anything in the system right now that keeps track of it, so there is some foundation change that would be necessary, which will take much longer to determine if it is even going to be possible. Small steps :)

RE: How do I get to the 'last post' in a thread?

fostertom — Wed, 22 Oct 2014 15:08:05 GMT

Excellent!
Even better would be to take me to the end of the last post that I personally have read, i.e. to the end of what was the last post at the time that I last opened the topic.

RE: How do I get to the 'last post' in a thread?

Phil Chouinard — Wed, 22 Oct 2014 14:33:01 GMT

As a follow-up to this, in the Forum - Thread List, the time/date on the right side of each thread is now a link that takes you to the end of that thread. So, the thread subject takes you to the start, the time/date in the right side takes you to the end of the thread.

RE: How do I get to the 'last post' in a thread?

Phil Chouinard — Fri, 17 Oct 2014 08:44:32 GMT

[quote user="stuartw"]

What other functionality takes you to the last post as I'm not seeing it?

[/quote]

Apologies for not being clearer... "other functionality" meaning all the new-and-improved with the new community platform being used.

[quote user="stuartw"]

BTW the online link from the email doesn't take you to the last post as I have just tested with your response!

[/quote]

Hmmm... that is interesting, because it works every time I do this:

That's in recent versions of Firefox or Chrome or IE with Outlook as the email client. If that is not working for you, then details about your particular setup might help identify what is preventing that from happening.

RE: How do I get to the 'last post' in a thread?

stuartw — Fri, 17 Oct 2014 07:46:32 GMT

[quote user="Phil Chouinard - Bentley"]

stuartw

fostertom

There really must be reinstatement of ability to go direct to 'latest post',

Didn't anyone in your testing ask for this?

To answer your specific question... no one in the usability labs or in testing brought this up, which quite possibly could be because there is so much functionality in the Communities platform that it never really surfaced.

Note that if you get forum posts in email, when you click the "View online" link, it DOES bring you to that specific post in the thread.

[/quote]

What other functionality takes you to the last post as I'm not seeing it?

BTW the online link from the email doesn't take you to the last post as I have just tested with your response!

RE: How do I get to the 'last post' in a thread?

Phil Chouinard — Fri, 17 Oct 2014 00:00:12 GMT

[quote user="stuartw"]

[quote user="fostertom"]

There really must be reinstatement of ability to go direct to 'latest post',

Didn't anyone in your testing ask for this?

[/quote]

Note that if you get forum posts in email, when you click the "View online" link, it DOES bring you to that specific post in the thread.

RE: How do I get to the 'last post' in a thread?

stuartw — Thu, 16 Oct 2014 22:18:22 GMT

[quote user="Phil Chouinard - Bentley"]

fostertom

There really must be reinstatement of ability to go direct to 'latest post',

This has been requested, although it is likely to require some deep development in the system (so is unlikely to be reinstated in the current release of the site)

[/quote][quote user="Phil Chouinard - Bentley"]

fostertom

There really must be reinstatement of ability to go direct to 'latest post',

This has been requested, although it is likely to require some deep development in the system (so is unlikely to be reinstated in the current release of the site)

[/quote]

Didn't anyone in your testing ask for this? Seems like the developers of the program missed a very obvious requirement.

RE: How do I get to the 'last post' in a thread?

Phil Chouinard — Thu, 16 Oct 2014 21:04:42 GMT

[quote user="fostertom"]

There really must be reinstatement of ability to go direct to 'latest post',

[/quote]

This has been requested, although it is likely to require some deep development in the system (so is unlikely to be reinstated in the current release of the site)

RE: How do I get to the 'last post' in a thread?

stuartw — Thu, 16 Oct 2014 18:42:57 GMT

Can we get this re-enabled? I am now back to having to scroll through lots of posts on the Home page which I'm not interested in.

RE: How do I get to the 'last post' in a thread?

fostertom — Thu, 16 Oct 2014 11:33:52 GMT

There really must be reinstatement of ability to go direct to 'latest post', incl if that's at end of a 2nd/3rd page in v long topics. Surely, simple as making the date/time of latest post, on R, into a live link?

RE: How do I get to the 'last post' in a thread?

fostertom — Wed, 15 Oct 2014 08:53:04 GMT

On other, quite primitive forums, the 'latest' button takes me by default not to the very last post but to to the most recent post that I've previously viewed, so I can continue on from there.

RE: How do I get to the 'last post' in a thread?

stuartw — Wed, 15 Oct 2014 06:11:12 GMT

Can we get this re-enabled? We are now back to having to scroll through (in some cases) pages of posts. Mind you it's still not good in short threads as all thread links seem to take you to the first post.

RE: How do I get to the 'last post' in a thread?

dshaw — Tue, 14 Oct 2014 16:13:44 GMT

Yeah I'm missing this- one of the things I used most.

Wouldn't mind a little button next to suggested answer and replies number to get me there