Hey, how can I get Discourse to do X?

Hardware and technical stuff
1200

Has anyone else experienced “Unread” disappearing when changing from “Unread” to “Latest”?

I usually change between the two when browsing on my desktop, having “Unread” as the baseline. I assume it is a change that is intended to be “helpful” when there are no new messages in “Unread”, but it is a hassle having to use the hamburger menu to change back to the default of “Unread”.

This is on Win10, Chrome Version 65.0.3325.181 (Official Build) (64-bit).

1201

I’ve definitely had both Unread and New disappear when there was nothing in either tab. Like you I’m assuming it’s a deliberate change but I don’t like it.

1202

These menu items (New and Unread) are now suppressed from topnav when they are empty, as clicking on them will lead to a blank page.

1203

What is the point of this? It’s always been perfectly clear when there were no New or Unread posts in those views, but now whenever they disappear they produce a nagging sense that something one’s brain is expecting to be there is missing, which is IMO distinctly less preferable than just having a button that leads to an empty view.

1204

Agreed. “Unread (0)” would be clear and consistent. Greying out or otherwise de-emphasizing it would be fine too. But having menu items just disappear is really confusing UX.

1205

+1 on the “why?”. Downgrade in functionality – before if you kept a tab on the main page the “Unread” would update and a quick tab over let me know if I should catch up. The current layout doesn’t update to show new unread threads until you refresh the page.

1206

Ok, I assumed it was an intentional “helpful” change. Please change it back, it is a hassle to do extra clicks to get to my default view.

1207

no one else around the world is complaining except these folks in Qt3 - /ignore!
:)

1208

One of my favorite things about Discourse is when functionality suddenly changes for no clear reason. Bonus points when the change is worse and goes against accepted design practices. Every day browsing the forums is an adventure!

1209

It will still appear dynamically if it needs to be there, so I think you misunderstood the change.

1210

My understanding is that

  1. When you first load the tab if there are no Unread/New posts, Unread/New disappears from top nav for… reasons.
  2. Until you do a hard refresh or step into the topic listings, the nav elements don’t reappear, even if there are now Unread/New posts.
  3. The remaining elements slide left, slotting in where Unread/New previously were and messing with layout consistency.
  4. Because of how Discourse is developed, the change appeared on Qt3 without any specific action on the admins’ part (I appreciate this from a security perspective fwiw).

Is any of that incorrect? If not I guess I don’t see the point in the change – the top nav wasn’t exactly cluttered before and it was extremely clear when there were Unread/New posts due to the number indicator.

1211

It needs to be there so I can change to my default view without using the hamburger menu.

1212

You can do it via keyboard shortcuts, press the ? key to see them. (Obviously not while you are typing into the editor, like I am now…)

1213

They should. Are you sure they aren’t? If they are not, this is a bug and we’ll fix that.

1214

image

Chrome 65 64-bit, Windows 7.

1215

Should be fixed via:

I will deploy the fix here soon. Thanks for reporting this issue!

EDIT: Fix is now deployed here.

1216

Also to whoever reported back button issues in iOS, I think @Clay, Apple finally fixed that in iOS 11.3.

1217

Yay!!!

1218

I don’t know when it was changed, but I really like the way the “first unread message” glow-fade effect waits until I switch to that particular browser tab now.

1219

Last night I saw a tweet opining that the word ‘discourse’ sounds like Goofy pronouncing the word ‘discuss’.

Cannot shake it.