👨🏼💻 #Proposal-86: Communities Update (& 🪳 Bug #3918)
It's been another 2 weeks since my last update and it's been a mixed bag of nice progress and cruel grind. I'll begin with the nice progress...
Communities
It was nice to see the positive feedback for the direction that the communities were heading in. The consensus being that users don't like having to scroll past years old posts in order to see new content. It was also acknowledged that some pinned posts, despite being older, still needed to be seen (things like community rules and posting guidelines).
@moecki summed it up nicely:
On the one hand, there is a reason why the communities have pinned posts, and on the other hand, I don't want to scroll through 100 pinned posts to reach the first new post.
The post also sparked a useful discussion with @patjewell who in a similar vein to the above, wanted the capability to filter for contests (for example). (My alternative Steemit Interface is definitely the best way to do this.) Whilst my initial thinking is that this would be too resource intensive (I don't think each post's tags are available to the App without additional API calls), it did lead to a better solution:
I could work on the opposite approach where the initial view shows all of the pinned posts and when the user selects "Collapse Pinned", then they can disappear and that setting can remain stored on their computer. It's probably the people who visit a community regularly that get most annoyed by having to scroll past the pinned posts every time so this feels like a better solution.
So this is what I've predominantly been working on.
I'll show the collapsed view first (because it will make for a prettier thumbnail).
As @pennsif suggested, I'm now showing 2 pinned posts at a time with the ability to scroll left and right, using the arrows provided. Alternatively, a user can select one of the carousel dots to jump through. Once you reach the end, if you click next, you loop back to the start again.
This layout definitely gives the pinned posts more impact upon landing on the page (assuming this isn't your 1st visit and you've collapsed all of the pinned posts on a previous visit). Perhaps this will lead to more engagement on pinned posts (if you're anything like me and pinned posts are now a blind spot).
The carousel can accept plenty of dots so communities that have a large number of pinned posts still work (although with more posts, you lose a bit of the design "finesse").
It also snaps quite nicely as the screen width gets narrower until the mobile view reverts to the existing, default "Blog" view.
Fewer Posts
If a community only has 2 pinned posts, the carousel element is removed.
1 post or fewer will display as existing.
When in default view (before the user has collapsed the pinned posts for the first time), the link separates the pinned posts from all other posts in a clear and unobtrusive way.
This is as far as I've got with the communities - there are still plenty of bugs to iron out and some layout tweaks are still required - in particular what to set the image height at.
🪳 Bug #3918
If you're reading this on your mobile or have your mobile to hand, open up steemit.com and see if you notice a problem. My guess, is probably not. Now scroll to the right and you'll see some blank space. Now scroll down and the blank space disappears. Scroll back to the top and hey! It's back again.
An innocuous bug that's been on Steemit for longer than most of us. A bug that most people won't have noticed because it's never caused a problem. Until now. For the new navigation - only on Android devices though!
Pain in the arse eh?
After much investigation, it became clear that the "Avatar Menu" was the source of all my woes but perhaps strangely, if you open the menu anywhere other than at the top of the screen, the problem's not there. Which I think's stupid.
Once identified, the fix was a simple change to use "display" properties instead of "visibility" which is now committed to GitHub, awaiting a release to steemitdev. (Note: Other solutions were available but this had the least impact upon other areas of the site. For clarity, "least" = "none".)
Google Cloud Deployment
Shall I have a rant about this? Maybe not today. This was the primary grind. Painful, unrewarding and unsuccessful grind. Although I did win. Sort of.
I'd love to hear your thoughts so far. Do you like the direction that the community's pinned posts are taking?
I personally really liked your solutions with the pinned posts. I'm sure you're headed in the right direction. Even with a lot of pinned posts, it still looks pretty decent.
A little off topic. While rummaging through the code, did you accidentally come across a deactivated counter of visits? 😉
Thanks - it does feel like the best solution so far. Perhaps somebody will think of a way to improve it further (I'd like to avoid it rotating automatically).
Showing 2 pinned posts at a time with the ability to scroll left and right, I like this. Thumbs up 👍
a deactivated counter that @o1eh asks about, nice if it came back again
Thanks 👍
I forgot to answer the counter question to @o1eh.
I think I saw it in the code so will need to do some digging.
One word... BRAVO!
Now, plenty words.
I remember that question I had. (•ิ‿•ิ)
What is the possibility of showing the first five tags under the intro of the post?
That would be of great help to curators.
My initial thought is that it'll require an API call for each post so might be detrimental to performance. If the data's already available (which I don't think it is) then it's just a question of doing it so that it looks nice 🙂
The solution approach with the carousel for the pinned articles is excellent. A return of the visitor counter would of course also be a big thing. That would be a real factor for the quality of the article. Because the upvotes are not!
On other social networks, votes, likes and faves are a good indicator, but there are neither vote trails nor upvote bots with different values.
Генільне рішення з можливістю прокрутити закріплені пости. Ви праві, щоразу пролистувати їх усі це ще те випробування моїх нервів 😤
Стосовно помилки, я тричі перечитав і все одно так і не зрозумів про що саме ви писали…
Ah, the error's something that happens on mobile devices which unfortunately, is more visible with the navigation redesign. I fixed it though - that's the important thing 🙂
TEAM 5
Thanks @o1eh. I wonder if @steemcuratorxx is taken 🤔
I wonder what you are up to? 😁
Ha ha, nothing. Look at your steem ratio message 😉
This post has been featured in the latest edition of Steem News...
Missed your post on #steemdev , not many see the post on #steemitdev
I liked the idea of making use of the extra tag that posting away from a community gets. Probably a bad idea in hindsight.
Hi, I have followed you, please follow me back
Madam, I was verifying my ID with a lot of difficulty, I don't know what you found wrong with me, if you found something wrong with me, then I apologize to you, please forgive me and verify my ID. . And she gave me the opportunity to work a little and the way to be by your side, madam, I apologize to you by forcing my hand, ma'am, verify my ID.
https://steemit.com/hive-172186/@maashraful/4t3tle-achievement-1-introduction
Ah, I see. You've highlighted the problem with submitting your Achievement 1 multiple times. Moderators alerted me to your first or second attempt but not your third.
Please could you update the 2 version you've deleted and include a link to the 3rd - as you have done in this comment. Then in future, community leaders will know where to look.
Your 'X' Account that you shared has been blocked again. Why does it keep getting blocked?
Ma'am my twitter id was blocked. Because I used to work on Airdrop, yes there was too much work and Twitter blocked the ID. Later I opened a new Twitter ID and verified my ID again. ripon0630 brother was even asking me to delete those two IDs. So I deleted those two IDs. Then Ripon bhai verified me. And mam I am a new user in estimate how can I improve my id now because of that I am working hard I am saying mam if you please verify my id I will be motivated to work then mam I will be in trouble again please verify my id mam. Because I am very willing to work here.
I'm not asking you to do much. Just edit this post and this post so that they include a link to this post.
Once you've done that, I can update your label.
Dear ma'am I was doing achievement one. I removed it because something went wrong and it says mistake, now what should I do.
ok done mam
Ma'am I am a new user. I don't know much about Steemit. Please, ma'am, I edited that and gave my verified ID Ta there. mam plz u update my it. And give me some support to work.
Ok, you don't need to copy the entire content. It's better that only this post has the entire content - So don't change this.
Please change the content of the other 2 posts (here and here) so that they just say:
https://steemit.com/hive-172186/@maashraful/4t3tle-achievement-1-introduction
Then we'll know where to look.
Ma'am I don't understand much. Please release me from the problem with whatever I could. I want to be eternally grateful to you and help me a little. Please give me some knowledge about how I can take my ID further.
I'm being as clear as I possibly can. I don't know how to phrase it any differently to make it any clearer.
It's better that only this post has the entire content - So don't change this.
Please change the content of the other 2 posts (here and here) so that they just say:
https://steemit.com/hive-172186/@maashraful/4t3tle-achievement-1-introduction
This is a great idea and much more aesthetically pleasing as well as practical. I assume the carousel would be structured with the most recently pinned post being displayed in the first two thumbnails which are visible by default?
It would be awesome if there was a way to separate pinned from perhaps "highlighted" stuff... Like pinned being critical and informative community related stuff and "highlighted" simply putting eyes on certain users posts for a limited time...
Either way - this is still a MASSIVE improvement from having to scroll for eternity through a sea of pinned posts, which yes - just like you, I barely even look at anymore.