Foundation Sidebars - Yes or No?

[Arantor]

you can see that there is drag and drop functionality in the ACP to some degree

Yes, but that's not the point. It won't be for end users to customise their experience.

I find the numbering input for display order so archaic now, and can easily be messed up by a key not hitting

On the other hand, it's perfectly suited to all the people who have motor control issues (of which there are surprisingly many), the folks who have limited vision and rely on screen readers and other assistive technologies (also surprisingly many, far more than we want to pretend), and doesn't have any issues working on mobile.

I think this would be enough for desktop users to get the hint...

I guess you weren't around for the era when the Google homepage was customisable with (many) widgets and how virtually no-one used it.

It's actually mirrored in more recent times by the Apple vs Android debate - Android owners would go on at length about how customisable their devices were and Apple owners had a habit of 'and? Even if I had it I wouldn't use it'.

Heck, even on forums that let you collapse categories, baked into the core software, the majority of users don't. Some because they don't know it's there, some because they don't care that it's there. Numbers for which is which are hard to pin down, however. (Getting numbers of users who don't use the functionality is trivial enough because the preferences for this get stored, naturally, because that's needed to make it work.)

 

[frm]

Yes, but that's not the point. It won't be for end users to customise their experience.

Yeah, I was merely introducing the concept of drag and drop in 2.4 so that it's a habitual thing that can be carried over to 3.0 for user preferences, little steps at a time to get people accustom to the action.

On the other hand, it's perfectly suited to all the people who have motor control issues

Drag and drop wouldn't completely abolish Display order ID. It could easily be drag/drop for some that would just convert the underlying Display order on the spot for insertion between or at the top/bottom. There should still be a Display order number for accessibility reasons, just accessible by clicking on the node to edit it as usual.

But, it makes rearranging much easier to drag and drop for those that can to rearrange a category, or to move children out of child nodes to be parents or even drag a node from one category to another. For those with accessibility issues, they could still go into the node to select the parent and numeric Display order.

Getting numbers of users who don't use the functionality is trivial enough because the preferences for this get stored, naturally, because that's needed to make it work.

If forums would collaborate and give up these numbers, it could give us a better idea of how to move forward: Toggles or no toggles.

 

[Arantor]

Yeah, I was merely introducing the concept of drag and drop in 2.4 so that it's a habitual thing that can be carried over to 3.0 for user preferences, little steps at a time to get people accustom to the action.

Interesting how much faith you have in the XF team to be so bold. Commendable, but I think a trifle overly-hopeful.

But, it makes rearranging much easier to drag and drop for those that can to rearrange a category, or to move children out of child nodes to be parents or even drag a node from one category to another.

You’d think, you’d actually think, but in practice this isn’t nearly as true as you’d believe (source: implemented this exact functionality in Wedge and my SMF gallery for organising albums, and seen it done countless times over the years)

What happens in practice is that you end up fighting to get things to be the correct sub level or setting one thing as a sub board of another by accident, and trying to balance that ends up causing you to make it clunkier by deliberately making it harder to do one of the things over the other.

DnD when you have a single tier of items and it’s purely ordering is fine. It’s the nesting part that kills people, every single time.

could give us a better idea of how to move forward

I can tell you the answer right now: for such functionality, less than 20% of users use it, and once you eliminate technical forums with power users, this number goes down to low single digits. This is based on all the forums I worked with in the last 15 years of working with SMF including my time in support and dev.

It’s actually trended lower in recent years as people increasingly assume they get what they’re given and deal with it, just the same way it works in practice with social media.

 

[ken_gitahi]

it's in a fixed position that scrolls with the board.

I have always thought this was the best option in terms of user experience. A sidebar should only contain important information (not all of your links and irrelevant information) and it should be sticky on large devices and not displayed on smaller ones.

If a user does not or cannot see the need to make use of your sidebar, then it should not exist.

Another thing to consider is that, if you are using your sidebar for navigation and other information, a user should be able to easily access those in other ways.

For example, you can make use of your footer to show the quick links that would otherwise show on your sidebar on larger devices when users are on smaller devices. This allows them to have the horizontal real estate on smaller devices while ensuring whatever was on the sidebar is still on the page, albeit relocated.

You can also use what developers call a "drawer" like this


to keep the sidebar out of the main view but still available if a user needs it on smaller devices.

 

[Bawse]

I love using sidebars on my forums. I've tweaked the placements of the widgets on my forums a lot.

 

[frm]

I love using sidebars on my forums. I've tweaked the placements of the widgets on my forums a lot.

Your forum has sure changed a lot since becoming a member there.

Good to see it progress.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

At first, I wanted to make it simplified so I went with no sidebars but I think it took away the familiar feel of the forum, so I've added them back for now