Foundation Sidebars - Yes or No?

[Cory]

I keep my sidebar minimal so it can fit decently on my small resolution. A user of my board was talking me into expanding it once, but I think the more minimalistic it is, the better. I present the essentials and not something completely unnecessary that you can find on other portions of the board that would take up a lot of space in the sidebar.

 

[Cloaked]

I’ve seen one forum where the sidebar goes on way beyond the forum index. It looks ridiculous and is really bad design. No one ever scrolls all that way so it’s just loading more information than is necessary and slowing down loading times as a result.

Also, use the bloody order system to put the important stuff at the top not at the bottom.

Seen that many times. There are probably hidden staff forums that the admin will see. Doesn't realize without them you create white space on forum list.

 

[Arantor]

What would be really good is if you could present the sidebars in a way that didn't consume allllll the height. You want to display that supplementary information? Make it an accordion. Tabs. Other collapsible formats exist. Let people hide the ones that don't interest them, use that as the start of a curated experience.

 

[Cory]

Tabs.

I don't think I've ever seen a tabbed sidebar before. That's a pretty neat idea. You could have tabs like "Account Information", "Recent Posts", "Users Online", etc.

I agree that there is no need to go miles long down the page for the contents of a sidebar. I keep my sidebar decently sized enough that a 768 height resolution (like mine) can view all of the contents and it's in a fixed position that scrolls with the board.

 

[Arantor]

Some SMF themes do it for the info centre on the front page for that exact set of functionality.

I took this concept to town in Moodle, though: it’s very common there to build things with blocks, both in courses and user dashboards, and scroll-of-death course pages are pretty normal. So I created a block that could hold other blocks and outline their presentation.

You can still see the screenshots of the things it let people do: https://moodle.org/plugins/block_multiblock

(It was hell to implement, mostly for supporting the course backup/restore feature Moodle has)

 

[frm]

One thing I do is have an expand/collapse option for the sidebar, and voila! Users who don't like the sidebar can collapse it.

I'm working with a new style that has this option.

It would be nice if there were an option where if they collapse them, what typically would go there would shift into above/below forum — and maybe even between category — widgets instead.

Then you can still display that information to those that don't like sidebars, but would still find having say, a carousel of trending topics useful to have at the top, between categories, or at the bottom useful.

That'd be the best of both worlds.

 

[Cedric]

What would be really good is if you could present the sidebars in a way that didn't consume allllll the height. You want to display that supplementary information? Make it an accordion. Tabs. Other collapsible formats exist. Let people hide the ones that don't interest them, use that as the start of a curated experience.

See, this is what I've been saying for a long time. Let people decide what they want to show. Bring more customization for the member. No side bar? Ok, toggle them off. Want to have a sidebar but only partial widgets? Great, let them drag and drop or whatever is possible. But we shouldn't assume people like everything the way we do.

 

[frm]

Great, let them drag and drop or whatever is possible.

I'm really hoping XF 3 either has a more up to date "social" format or blocks that let, firstly, the admin to decide placement, but can be extended to letting users design their own custom layouts. In other words, let admins set the display order for first time viewers, but a style (either core or extendable by 3rd party) let users collapse, hide, and even drag and drop categories they think are more important higher, as it'll let them ignore the noise easier, thus theoretically, increase engagement, as they see what they want to post to or interact with first and foremost.

Edit: I forgot I have custom development to hide (ignore/block, rather, without blocking the author of the thread if they only wish to block it, along with categories and nodes [if permission is set to allow blocking of those categories and nodes in the node settings]) that I had developed for 2.2. It's a pipedream to think XF will implement this in v3, so I might give this a test run on 2.3 as it might let users focus more time on what they want to see, allowing for more engagement since they can quickly view what they want and save time to post or reply there.

 

[Arantor]

I doubt XF 3 will provide a more social format. I also doubt quite strongly that it'll give user customisation in that regard, let alone drag and drop. I could see better placement by admins though.

Curating the user experience is really where the future is - such as there is one - but it needs to be infinitely better signposted than previous attempts in other markets to allow for it otherwise users won't know it's there, or won't care.

 

[frm]

I also doubt quite strongly that it'll give user customisation in that regard, let alone drag and drop.

With DigitalPoint's Better Google Analytics add on, you can see that there is drag and drop functionality in the ACP to some degree. As 2.4 is focusing on, or so they say, admin improvements, I'm at least hopeful that they get rid of numerical display order in favor of drag and drop for nodes, etc. I find the numbering input for display order so archaic now, and can easily be messed up by a key not hitting (say you want display order 100 but enter 10). While not complex at all to fix, it would take (frustrating to some) seconds to try and find the node again to edit it to the correct display order, when you could just drag and drop it and have a better visual layout.

[DigitalPoint] Better Google Analytics

That is a constant in Sodium. So if that constant isn’t there, Sodium isn’t installed. What version of Sodium does it say is installed for you?

xenforo.com

That is the reasoning behind my logic of XF 3 allowing, or being able to, have drag and drop. Maybe not as a core function on the 1st party style, but allow for 3rd party styles to drag and drop widget placement order, and it update for them only.

but it needs to be infinitely better signposted

I think this would be enough for desktop users to get the hint... but there's always a forum announcement that can be made as mobile users wouldn't see this and catch on, so they'd need to be instructed to long press a category/node to drag and drop it.