The old forums always had the breadcrumbs at the top of the window so you could navigate the hierarchy quickly and easily. I find navigation very frustrating in the new forums - please give is back a set of breadcrumbs that shows where we are and lets us get back to the top with a single click from anywhere in the forum.
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if you want back to the top, click the eve icon at the top? If you want to go up to higher level forum, click the names below the title of the post?
It’s all there?
Getting back to the top from within a post requires clicking the Eve icon -> Top -> all categories -> all categories
So, the functionality is there but the breadcrumbs are a lot more convenient!
That’s weird.
I click on the Eve in the top bar (or the E when I’m in a topic) and it drops me back on the top level.
Mobile?
(just to be clear, it’s the one on the top left I’m clicking. Not the hamburger next to my portrait)
Old:
New:
Only thing it’s missing is the home link, which would be nice just to have the full path that your viewing. Tho just clicking the Eve logo takes you the home page as well, so that’s been fine for me.
As for the E menu, it shows up fine on mobile, I think it’s just the convince aspect.
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It’s not just the functionality. It’s a lack of sense of place. Sure, you can mash buttons and eventually get somewhere, but effective organization is obviously not a priority in how these forums are designed. I feel like the odds of finding an interesting conversation on these forums are basically nil. In the old forums I’d know which sections interest me, and could tell at a glance which threads are probably worth interest, and once I’m taking part would know where I am in the forums at a glance and jump somewhere else interesting with a couple clicks. This forum feels like all the garbage categories and garbage posts are being pushed to the fore, hiding anything that’s worth reading or taking part in. The lack of breadcrumbs is a huge part of that. And now, with almost 2,000 posts and almost 2,000 (legitimate) likes on the old forums, I wonder if this is going to be my only post on the new forums. As of right now this appears to be the only thread worth taking part in.
Judging by the Discourse Demo, https://try.discourse.org/, and from the conversations on the developer’s forum, category navigation is an afterthought or a concession by the discourse developers in the first place. It’s there for people who are set in their ways from other forums, but, it’s not the best way to navigate at all.
Discourse’s strength is that it uses a client/server design that allows it to offer individually filtered views that would melt the servers if you were using other forum software. Using that filtering is critical to finding the interesting gems among the noise, but once you learn to use it, it does it in a way that simply can’t be matched. That’s why there are people like myself that are very excited about this new forum - I couldn’t possibly keep track of the old forums, but on this one, I can potentially keep up with the vast majority of threads, even as it gets busier, because the majority of them I will see exactly once.
The Latest, New, Unread, and Top views are the best ways to navigate, and once you learn to use them, you will save time, and find interesting content faster.
- Latest - this is a flattened forum, it shows all the threads in the order that they’ve been posted in, as they’d be if they were in a single forum. Categories that you’ve muted don’t show up. There’s a “last visit” marker here that shows what’s new since you last browsed.
- New - this shows new threads that you haven’t yet looked at, again, from places that aren’t muted.
- Unread - this shows threads with new posts, but only if you are tracking (or more closely watching) those threads.
- Top - this shows posts based on how heavily the community is interacting with them, that is, the likes, replies, and the incoming links to that thread. This is one of two places where your notification settings don’t matter.
- Categories view - this shows all the categories, and lets you navigate into a category and see all the post there, the way most people are used to. What this is actually good for, is surviving a high volume section of the forum, or a section you only go to when specifically looking for something. Mute that area, go to it directly once in a while, and have it left off of your latest, new, and unread views. There’s also a “last visit” marker here that shows what’s new since you last browsed.
Adjusting the notification settings in categories, subcategories, and individual threads is absolutely key to getting the most out of these forums. Discourse will help you a bit with this, by setting threads to “tracking” after you spend a few minutes reading them (you can adjust when this happens and under what conditions in your preferences).
Remember to aggressively mute threads you consider to be worthless, if you don’t want to look at a thread again, you don’t have to.
I was using the navigation E in the top right. The one in the top left works!
Perfectly clear if previously understood!
CCP is giving us a free adventure game figuring out how the new forums work.
I still miss the old breadcrumbs!
Discourse definitely has a learning curve, as it only superficially behaves like other forums.
