Timeline for Custom Question Lists: Pre-launch Update
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
15 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Mar 22, 2019 at 19:37 | comment | added | Cave Johnson | Also wanted to add another observation about youtube. If you happen to be logged in and you subscribe to channels. You will notice that a list of your subscriptions show in the left sidebar and a blue indicator dot shows up if there are new videos in any of your channels. This is very useful to me and I don't see why the same design couldn't be used for custom question lists. | |
| Mar 22, 2019 at 18:56 | comment | added | Cave Johnson | I wish I could upvote this a hundred times. On the other hand, I would have to agree with @MadScientist, they really need to adjust the threshold when the sidebar goes away. Personally, I would like it if SE adopts the design of YouTube. The sidebar is all the way to the left and disappears long before it severely affects the width of the content. | |
| Mar 22, 2019 at 15:11 | comment | added | Mad Scientist | I'm not sure anyone bothered with a meta post about the priority of resizing in the responsive design, though there might be some answers on the big topics about it. My personal reason for not posting full questions about it is that SE said the responsive design is unfinished, and chasing after this kind of moving and ill-defined target is rather futile as an outsider. The design also seems to have plenty of constraints I don't understand or can't follow, which makes it hard to make any useful suggestions. | |
| Mar 22, 2019 at 15:09 | comment | added | Mad Scientist | The preference to hide the left sidebar is a hack, it was done this way because the preferences system exists and it was easier. If your screen is wide enough to fit all content, the left sidebar doesn't hurt the other content. The issues you mention come into play once the screen is too narrow for everything, and this is something that needs to be fixed in the design, not with a preference. | |
| Mar 22, 2019 at 14:03 | comment | added | Monica Cellio Mod | @MadScientist "bad default choices" is in the eye of the beholder. (I supported my argument.) The left nav collapsing last is a big problem, I agree -- is there a meta post that covers that? | |
| Mar 22, 2019 at 10:39 | comment | added | Mad Scientist | Preferences are not an acceptable solution to bad default choices, odds are that the vast majority of users will never touch them. The problem here isn't necessarily that the sidebar is expanded by default, it is that it collapses last in the responsive design. The current responsive design is simply unfinished and broken. | |
| Mar 22, 2019 at 0:54 | comment | added | Monica Cellio Mod | @MadScientist but you're not the target -- you're an experienced user and you can set a preference (especially if we go with Catija's suggestion to apply it everywhere, including where you don't have an account). People coming from Google, on the other hand, are unlikely to be using anything in the left nav, even questions -- they're landing on the main page which already gives them a list of questions, after all, and why would they think that a "questions" link would be any different? For them, the left nav consumes a lot of space without providing value compared to more space for Q&A. | |
| Mar 21, 2019 at 22:50 | comment | added | Mad Scientist | Collapsing the left sidebar hides the Questions link, that’s a very important navigation item for me. Hiding that behind two clicks is seriously annoying. I don’t think the current collapsed state is good enough to be a default. | |
| Mar 21, 2019 at 22:18 | history | edited | Monica CellioMod | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Mar 21, 2019 at 21:50 | history | edited | Monica CellioMod | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Mar 21, 2019 at 21:19 | comment | added | Catija StaffMod | I think the solution that really solves your problem is to have the preference apply on all sites, not only those you're a member of. The thing is, hiding these links by default in a hamburger on a full webpage view makes for pretty bad UX because non-logged-in users will not be able to find them easily. People shouldn't have to poke around in hamburgers to find these links. I just think it'd be more fair for your answer to say that there's no current plans rather than that it "probably won't be" made use of. | |
| Mar 21, 2019 at 21:13 | comment | added | Monica Cellio Mod | @Catija sure, eventually, if we find a use for it. Meanwhile, it's taking a lot of real estate out of circulation. We could always revisit defaults when there's more content, just as I'm proposing revisiting the default now when we know there won't be any time soon. | |
| Mar 21, 2019 at 19:22 | comment | added | Monica Cellio Mod | @ChristianRau good point. Now that -- on all sites except SO -- the left nav only ever has five menu items, it seems strange to have it be separate from another widget that only has about 7-8 menu items and a search box... | |
| Mar 21, 2019 at 19:12 | comment | added | Christian Rau | Indepenent of this, I wonder if you ridea of putting the site switcher there might also make more sense now, though, since I remember a primary hindrance to that were the supposedly new custom question lists. | |
| Mar 21, 2019 at 19:06 | history | answered | Monica CellioMod | CC BY-SA 4.0 |