XF 2.1 Content bookmarks and the return of per-post share controls

Ahh, it seems like only yesterday (as I write this, it was!) we were talking about the fifth in our HYS series for XF 2.1, and already we're onto the sixth, so welcome! In case you've not yet seen the previous entries, (why not?!) you can check them out here.

As ever, to ensure you're kept up to date, we strongly recommend giving that "Watch forum" link a tickle and make sure you enable email notifications if you haven't done so already 🙂
 
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Content bookmarks

XF has always made it super easy to find new content you've not yet read, and re-engage you with content you've already interacted with, but who here has ever read a post (or some other content) and wanted to come back to it later, or wanted to save a specific post so you can refer back to it in the future?

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Of course there are lots of ways to solve this kind of problem. You could use the forum search, but that still relies on you having to remember you wanted to come back to it at some point, and you still need to remember specific keywords to find it. You could use browser bookmarks, but on different devices and different browsers that can be cumbersome. You could keep open all of the tabs you want to come back to at some point, but again different devices and browsers (and having to shut down Chrome for the 5th time that day because memory) makes it difficult.

I could also just try to remember but... wait, what was I saying again? Oh, right... bookmarks.

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Supported content types now have a bookmark icon.
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Clicking the bookmark icon will instantly bookmark that content. Which is great, but occasionally you might want to add some additional context to help you locate that bookmark again in the future.

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The message text will be displayed when viewing your bookmarks (otherwise a snippet of the content is displayed instead) and labels are a way to categorise your bookmarks (similar to tags).

Of course adding a note or labels is totally optional, in which case you would just click out of the tooltip to close it.

So how is content you've bookmarked accessed?

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Slightly redesigned account navigation!
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Your bookmarks are available no matter where you are on the forum. Simply click the bookmark icon to see a list of your bookmarks:

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From here you can go straight to the content, or click the icon for more options:

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"Copy to clipboard" copies the link of the content to the clipboard, which is useful if you want to share a link to the content for any reason.

In terms of filtering, you can click the label on any of the bookmarks to go to a list of all bookmarks with that label, or you can search directly. Clicking on the filter input will show you all of your existing labels, and just clicking one will apply that label filter immediately. You can also start typing to er... filter the filter list.

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Of course you can also access your full list of bookmarks from your account page:

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Initially we're supporting the following content types:
  • Threads
  • Posts
  • Nodes (only page nodes exposed)
  • Media items (requires XFMG 2.1)
  • Albums (requires XFMG 2.1)
  • Resources (requires XFRM 2.1)
  • Resource updates (requires XFRM 2.1)
But, as ever, developers can very easily add bookmarks support to their own content types.
 
Per post share controls

In XF 1 we used to have an overlay that could be accessed by clicking on the post position number that gave you various share controls.

We're bringing back something similar in XF 2.1 but hopefully in a more useful and accessible way.

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As well as being able to share directly to various social media outlets, you can also copy a link to the content directly to the clipboard.

What's better is that this share control is written in a fairly generic way so should add-on developers want to add this to their own add-ons it is very simple to do so.
 
What's in-store next week?

The next HYS is slightly different. On Tuesday next week we will be taking a look at some more developer focused changes. Hopefully you will find that interesting whether you're a developer or not.

But, fear not, we'll be back on Thursday next week with another new feature announcement :)
 
Chris D said:
Interestingly there are new phrases in use there, but they're empty by default. We felt that maybe not everyone would want to lose the labels, so if that's the case you can just update the empty phrases to get the labels back :)
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Oh, ok. Great.
 
Is that a new online icon I spy? ;)

Great to see bookmarks, that will be super useful.

How will the dropdown for bookmarks work for anyone who has a lot? Scrollable, or just show the first X items? Also what order are they listed in - date the bookmark was added?

Any reason why profile posts aren't bookmarkable?

Per post share controls are a welcome return too!
 
Bookmarks, brilliant. That's one less addon to worry about.
Is there any reason why you're using 'labels' for bookmarks rather than tags? Because it seems that labels are tags, right? And this is the first time I've seen 'labels' in Xenforo.
 
Looks like Alert Improvements is going to need a 'convert alert to bookmark' button :D

Stuart Wright said:
Is there any reason why you're using 'labels' for bookmarks rather than tags? Because it seems that labels are tags, right? And this is the first time I've seen 'labels' in Xenforo.
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My guess; Tags is used to mean content tags elsewhere, and using labels avoids conflicting them.
 
Martok said:
Is that a new online icon I spy? ;)
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We have a winner!

Martok said:
How will the dropdown for bookmarks work for anyone who has a lot? Scrollable, or just show the first X items? Also what order are they listed in - date the bookmark was added?
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We display the most recently bookmarked items in there, up to 25 of them in a scrollable list. You can however access any bookmark in there if it is labelled and you filter by label.

Martok said:
Any reason why profile posts aren't bookmarkable?
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Not a big issue to add it, just didn't feel there was a huge need for it.
 
Stuart Wright said:
Bookmarks, brilliant. That's one less addon to worry about.
Is there any reason why you're using 'labels' for bookmarks rather than tags? Because it seems that labels are tags, right? And this is the first time I've seen 'labels' in Xenforo.
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Xon said:
Looks like Alert Improvements is going to need a 'convert alert to bookmark' button :D


My guess; Tags is used to mean content tags elsewhere, and using labels avoids conflicting them.
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Yeah these labels aren't actually using the XF default content tag system and it's a separate, more lightweight system which is specific to bookmarks.
 
Chris D said:
We have a winner!
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I'd ask what prize I get but it'll probably be a swift visit from @Brogan with a big stick. :eek:

Chris D said:
We display the most recently bookmarked items in there, up to 25 of them in a scrollable list. You can however access any bookmark in there if it is labelled and you filter by label.
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That's plenty, good they're in recently bookmarked order and definitely a good reason to use labels.

Chris D said:
Not a big issue to add it, just didn't feel there was a huge need for it.
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I'm not sure there will be as much need for it but I'm guessing that someone will at some point want to bookmark a profile post, so it may be worth adding if it doesn't take too much work or cause any other issues.
 
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