Yes, there is usually at least one person with just the right level of, uh, let’s say … flair … to set someone off in a discussion, and encourage the pressing of the reply button on their post.
It’s not as bad as it sounds, since you can keep reading, scrolling, etc with the editor visible.
Let’s go to the other extreme. As a thought experiment, what if we hid all the reply buttons until you reached the bottom of the topic, then they magically appeared on each post, and of course at the bottom where you already are?
Another idea. We could nag people who have the editor open, but have not reached the bottom of the topic yet, such that they can’t submit their pending reply until they do reach the bottom of the topic.
I think there are much more interesting and effective ways to tackle this than “let’s hide the cookie jar to lose weight”.
Probably my English is inadequate - the blue blob is distracting because it’s in my field of view when slowly scrolling through a topic. My eyes follow the text and the static blue thingy makes it much harder to follow the content. The button at the bottom is no problem because it’s at the bottom (harr) and does not move (i.e. is stable in regard to the rest of the page).
@TailOfTruth’s motion sickness is as word too drastic, but I like it as an exaggerated description of the issue.
PS Just realized that there’s a workaround. I will use BB only with an open reply box - the blue monster vanishes and is replaced by the polite small pale blue post counter box at the bottom right : )
Speak of the devil, I just finished throwing this together in a image editor because I was curious to see what it could look like as a concept. @codinghorror what do you think about something in this general design area as an alternative to the scrollbar?
Well, that would just be confusing. Reaching the end of the thread to reply to the thread makes logical sense, having every post reply pile up at the bottom… (I know this is supposed to be a thought experiment, but did you just suggest that?)
I like your proposal, but for me it would be sufficient if the blue blob would be not in the center of the page. What about moving the slider thingy to the bottom?
Maybe, I don’t want to completely discount the scrollbar UI, but I don’t really like it all that much. However in general whether it’s a scroll bar or a little… sideways scrollbar thing (?) I definitely agree with you, whatever the UI it should float at the bottom of the page not in the middle.
I think right is good, as it has to float somewhere or you’d never see it until you hit the bottom of the thread. That reply button is a big bugbear though. It’s just asking to be pressed (RIGHT NOW).
Really rather y’all didn’t. BBS lately doesn’t have a good track record figuring out when I’ve read all the posts in a thread (whether on mobile or on desktop). It’s not annoying enough to have bothered reporting it but if y’all make us read all the posts in a thread before responding, I may not be able to respond to most threads.
The question mark has been a fairly standard character for “help” since way back. It’s one of the symbols I type when I’m on a machine where I can’t figure out what the damn OS is. You know it works on discourse now though, so what’s the fuss?
No fuss, just pointing out that I still wouldn’t know about it if I hadn’t idly looked through this almost completely unrelated thread. Your experience isn’t my experience.
A help menu shouldn’t really be hidden, it should be one of the most obvious parts of the UI.
I used adblock to pull out the bottom “reply” and the tracking circle (OT: why does a blue dot signify tracking, and why is the tooltext vastly different?), and it again takes out some of the distraction of having a big, bold, fixed button hovering at the side.
I like the idea of making it more transparent, but perhaps even more so when the page is static and there’s no scrolling going on.
The desktop screens that I use have plenty of unused space on this website, so I like the idea of some of it being used.
I like the “Back” button — I often click on a notification and get taken to a point three days ago in a thread I’m almost up-to-date on, and have to figure out where the first unread post is. Is there any way to incorporate the “go to first unread” button into Mobile?
I agree that the lighter blue is nicer; can we make that whole area (including the “Reply” button and notification settings) lighter as well, and just make it darker when the mouse is in the right margin (when someone is trying to make use of them)?
Speaking of the Notification options, I like being able to disable notification without scrolling to the bottom (for example, when I wander into a Games thread).
Finally, I’m wondering: What happened to the “reply into new topic” button, now that this is in its former place?
Description: blue rectangle with text “Back” appears on the slider obscuring portions of slider
Expected Behavior: 1) do not know what the “Back” refers to 2) not obscure text
Steps to Reproduce: Unknown. First noticed in another thread. Re-occured in a different portion of the slider after I came into this thread to post, via a search that led me to the middle of the thread. I had already grabbed and slid the slider when I noticed the blue square.
