Some people I'm trying to introduce to L1T forums have issues because it's "hard to use" in their words. They are used to traditional forums.
Is there a tutorial on how Discourse works?
For example, I had to experiment to find out that the blue circles beside threads are new posts in the thread since it was last on your feed and the white ones are posts you haven't read yet.
And it isn't intuitive that those are buttons/links to take you directly to the first new post or first post you haven't read, respectively.
Or that the bar on the right has a "Back" button to jump back to where you were when you use it to jump to an earlier section of a thread.
Things of that nature.
Clicking the circles to go to the posts is new information to me.
I know not a single forum that doesn't do this when you're logged in. They all take you to the latest post since you last read.
well yeah, but then again it also has a thread system in a topic so you don't even need to jump
But I agree it's a different approach to a forum. The first times I saw Discourse I was confused since there didn't seem to be the classic sub forums but apparently there were... until I realised it's just in the upper left and it just displays all new/latest posts by default (whereas on most forums you'd need to go to "new posts" or something).
I had forgotten about that. That is useful, thanks. Basically RTFM. lol
No mention of what the white ones are. And no mention of "these are buttons/links you can click to do things." Basically they look like informational things only and not functional things.
I know of no other forums that have a button beside the title of a thread that does this functionality besides other Discourse forums.
If you mean "when you click the thread title" that's not the same thing because discourse doesn't do that. Clicking the thread title takes you to the first post in a thread. Always.
The point of jumping is to check an older post for one reason or another. Scrolling through 1000 posts to get to post #456 is pointless when you can jump to it by either typing it in at the bottom or clicking the bar. Plus that would suck since there aren't pages. Better have a Logitech Proteus Core with it's no friction scroll wheel.
This is not the case. the entire title will take you to the last post you read up to, not just the unread post indicator. You don't need to go out of your way to press them since the forum will always send you to the last read position.
I don't think there's any specific forum howto around, but most things are reasonably explained with alt text or icon.
Are there specific things in mind? I'll explain them here.
(@tiramisu your post could be more productive or helpful..)
You don't even need to click the round thingies to get to the latest post o.o Just click on the topic title
Not for me nope xD at least not on the Unread page, might be different on Latest, I'd need to try that.
You don't need to jump in this case though, you can just click the "replied to" name and it pops open the thing on which it was answered You can also click on the little arrow in Quotes and you're being shown the whole post.
How do you tell which topics require logging in to see them and which don't while you are logged in? Context: Sharing links with people who don't have accounts.
Other than what I've mentioned, none that I'm aware of.
Scenario: I know I want to quote someone from earlier in the thread but it was far back. No reply button. Best to jump.
If the forum category has a padlock on it, then you have to at least be logged in. the only locked categories for users is the Off-Topic sub-category and Server category (soon to be changed I hope). I think the Off Topic Category requires trust level 1 which is a user who's had an account for around a day.
I usually just scim through the topic and quote on the fly.
People get notified for the quotes the same way they are when replying via Reply button and (even though it doesn't state it) the answers seem to get connected in the thread thing.
I think that is to post though, not to read. I could read the Off-Topic before and I had a padlock there until recently (I think even yesterday when I got Regular), but I have never tried to post there... so not sure.
/edit Also, I think this has been resolved but I already did this work of art before, so...:
If you know the post number, you can go directly to their post number with the scroll widget on the side >
You can search for the post with the search icon and limit it to the topic
You can search for the user
Or you can just tag them if you know the context @Vitalius
To quote a post btw, you can click reply on a specific post, or highlight certain text from the post and you will be given an optino to make a reply quoting that text.
It will quote the test in your reply and your quote will allow for expansion of the whole post or to jump to it (or expand previous replies).
Just tried that on Vivaldi and it works fine? Maybe how the browser handles the selection. I'm on Linux.
Then it seems to be OS dependent.
Thanks, although that was an example to mihawk of when you'd want to jump without reading a full thread.
That's what I usually do too. What I'm talking about isn't useful in threads you never intend to go back and read in. In long running threads it's more useful.
Oh, then yeah that's probably it.
Edit 1:
@Eden If you edit in a quote after posting, does the user receive the notification? I'd presume yes, but we'll see regarding mentions since I edited this line in.
Edit 2:
Also, these things:
The blue line. How do you get/set those? I've been through my profile, but can't find the setting?
might use it later.