Improve forum breadcrumbs

I increased the prio of this one because questions about this come up quite often, and understandably so.

Matt Blumberg: what's your take on this, layout-wise?

Made formatting changes to comments as discussed (d09bdf17).

Assigning to Matt for work on the topic at hand (breadcrumbs).

Notes:

• Timestamp should be consistent between topic and comments and should be understated
• Message ID link should also be understated, not blue (use all caps, grey)
• Reply link should be up in the header, also grey, separate from message ID by a slash
• Make signature grey (like the timestamp)
• Ignore user in user block, above send message (make both a little smaller)
• Replace topic with breadcrumbs: Message Boards -> Cafe Einstein (grey links)
• Move topic name to where Message Boards is
• Remove topic ID
• Move subscribe to upper right corner, middle aligned with topic

Made formatting changes to comments as discussed (d09bdf17).

I pretty much like these! One thing though: how about right-justifying the message ID part. It separates it clearly from the timestamp and it would also help visually defining the bounding-box (right edge) of the post.

One comment regarding link styling: we should avoid having multiple styles for links and try to make them easily recognisable. If we decide to make links blue we should stick to that. The breadcrumb issue is a prime example for that as users didn't recognise the link as a link - it's not blue.

Usability is often about favouring recognition over recalling. In order to recognise things you need to have an existing memory of it. We should thus be consistent and reuse common metaphors and styling. Making some links grey isn't helpful IMHO.

Many tweaks made (7c0ff76d,9368b6ef).

Oliver, I agree with simplification, but that is also one of the reasons to have multiple link styles. This design has no buttons, so every action is a link. It would be a lot of links for your eye to process if they were all blue. So we have this concept of less important links / secondary actions that are rendered in bold grey instead.

Ok, I understand the reasoning and I tend to agree - if the number of different formats is limited, say, to two formats max.

However, I don't like some of the changes:

• Distinguishing "SEND MESSAGE" and "Ignore user" doesn't feel right (seems more inconsistent than intentional)
• Distinguishing "subscribe" from the other post controls/buttons doesn't feel right and also looks somewhat ugly between the heading and the breadcrumbs. I'd move it back down to the other post controls/buttons (first in line). It's a control/button after all, not just a link.
• The "TOPIC XXX" should also be a blue link (like "MESSAGE XXX)

The moderation links have been separated from standard links and moved onto a second line (fd0b09de, 30e664ab).

This should resolve all forum format concerns for the albert release.

Confirmed.

I'm not sure about the parentheses around the admin buttons/links and the accompanying "moderation:" prefix though, and they weren't part of yesterday's discussion. While the former might stay I definitely like to remove the latter. Ok?

Thanks,
Oliver

Easy enough to hide (f95705a1).

I think it looks a little sloppy (or at least unintentional) without the label, so I took some liberties...

Yeah, I see your point. Anyhow, let's keep it like this for while - it's E@H-specific now anyway

Last thing: I take that "RESET FLAGS" is a non-moderator control applicable to the initial topic post only, right? My assumption stems from the fact that it's currently displayed next to the timestamp (BTW, where's the REPLY control of the initial post?).
If so, we should probably change its tool tip text because even I don't really know it's exact purpose...

Sorry, I need to come back to this once more: is it possible that the EDIT control is now part of the admin controls only? A volunteer pointed out that he can't find the EDIT button for his forum post.

Apart from the general availability of that button: shouldn't it be displayed in the line above (next to the timestamp / message ID)? I think it would make sense to either show the EDIT control (when I'm the author) or the REPLY control (I'm not the author).

The button is there for non-admin users; it's next to the timestamp as you describe:

15 Aug 2013 14:42:06 UTC MESSAGE 79634 EDIT REPLY REPORT

having said that, it gets kind of lost with the other info and generally unimportant links.

so i suggest that [1] EDIT be the last item, and [2] maybe EDIT should be blue, since it is a key function (*subject the following caveat):

• for general users, my understanding is that EDIT should only appear on your latest post, and only if nothing has subsequently been posted in reply. ie, for a regular user, there would only be one (blue) EDIT link on any thread – and only sometimes.
  • fyi, on this thread it seems to me that all my posts have EDIT links, not just my latest.

The button is there for non-admin users; it's next to the timestamp as you describe:

Ok, then it's maybe just me, being an admin.

so i suggest that [1] EDIT be the last item, and [2] maybe EDIT should be blue, since it is a key function

That's fine with me, but I agree then we might be back to square one if we allow it for all personal posts - which seems to be the case in BOINC. I'm not sure whether we should follow BOINC in this regard or use the more reasonable way of allowing edits only until the next post arrives. I tend to favour the latter but users might disapprove.

FYI, BOINC doesn't allow anyone, not even moderators/admins, to edit foreign content. You can just moderate (hide) it. I think we should do the same, to prevent even accidental changes or undeniable blaming.

TODO:

• Move the edit link to the right of reply
• Be sure user post counts are accurate (they aren't)

Done and done (de546089 and f9876267).

Also a note about editing posts. Users are only able to edit their posts if no one has replied. Once there is a reply, the user can no longer edit, which explains the volunteer notice to this effect.

Also a note about editing posts. Users are only able to edit their posts if no one has replied. Once there is a reply, the user can no longer edit, which explains the volunteer notice to this effect.

Sigh, I just told them they can edit all their past posts. So you say that one can edit one's post as long as there's no direct reply to the post in question, as compared to general topic replies that are just newer posts to the same thread? If so, we should change that as it's highly confusing in my opinion. Can you "fix" that by allowing users to edit their own posts, no matter what?

Oliver

It is a core Drupal "feature" a comment cannot be edited after a direct reply is made to it (using the Reply link). It's also a core Drupal feature that this setting is not configurable...

There are ways to override this, for example: https://drupal.org/node/489504#comment-6078370

But I'd consider this a future improvement.

Agreed. Opened a new ticket.

Dreaded breadcrumbs...

It has been criticised that the current breadcrumbs are not yet consistently available everywhere. I think that's right. They should also be used on subforum containers to get to the next higher level. So being here the breadcrumbs should still be available like this:

FORUMS > DRUPAL BETA TEST

Only "FORUMS" would be an active (grey) link in this case of course.

Thanks

This introduces redundancy in the headers, which also has been criticized... but there you have it! (f387e8a7, 5f2b7aa2)

Really, do you remember where this got criticised? The alternative would have been to make the "Forums" title an active link which would have to be done consistently across the whole site - bad in its own right. Also, I don't really see where this introduced redundancy. Can you give me an example?

It isn't bad, just repeating the word "Forums" right underneath the word "Forums". The criticism was for the Account Info page, which had the word "Account" four times!

Those were different times in a different context I don't think we should apply the same rules here. But yes, we could restructure all site headings to always reflect their page's path (use breadcrumbs) as an alternative. I'm not sure about the aesthetics though...

We should really think about repeating the breadcrumbs at the bottom of the comment page. It would make it much easier to go elsewhere when you read through a topic. We should probably also add them when in reply-mode to make it easier to navigate to another thread, say, in the same forum to lookup something (in a separate tab).

I can understand the argument for it, but would consider it largely one of personal preference, so I'm not sure I agree that this is a high priority item for the Einstein release.

Maybe a link to the top of the page would help this?

This is still flagged as an "improvement"

Yes, a "to top" link might also do it but I fear it would be rather hard to notice. Another approach could be to make this user-configurable via a community pref: "Breadcrumbs location" -> Dropdown: Top, Bottom, Both (default: Top).

Added breadcrumbs to bottom of page. Closing this one as it's already been open for too long and most (if not all) features are now implemented.