Outdated front-end

[MISC]

I own two Xenforo licenses - and I still think, that Xenforo is the best forum software available. But is becomes more and more outdated on the front-end. Responsive design only is no longer enough. We need features like a touch-optimized mobile version, a mobile optimized composer (floating) and infinite scrolling.

I know that some of these features could be implemented by an optimized theme. But I was not able to find such a theme - and I think that the standard theme should also be up-to-date and innovative.

 

[Amaury]

Infinite scrolling? No, thank you.

 

[Carla Birch]

Defo no to Infinite scrolling, i hate that thing.

 

[Claudio]

Defo no to Infinite scrolling, i hate that thing.

Do you use Facebook?

 

[Amaury]

That wasn't directed at me, I know, but I don't mind it on Facebook. However, it's not suited for a forum.

 

[Claudio]

Forum admins tends to hate some Facebook features or characteristics but it's a fact users love it

 

[James]

Do you use Facebook?

Facebook's infinite scrolling works because the feed is constantly updating and changing and nobody really goes on Facebook and finds where they were up to then continues from there.

Forums need pagination to provide good reference points for content. Imagine reading a thread then having to scroll through 300 posts to find where you were last up to? God no!

 

[Claudio]

Facebook's infinite scrolling works because the feed is constantly updating and changing and nobody really goes on Facebook and finds where they were up to then continues from there.

Forums need pagination to provide good reference points for content. Imagine reading a thread then having to scroll through 300 posts to find where you were last up to? God no!

Oh no, I'm not talking about threads. I just think an infinite scroll will be useful for the new posts page only and the media gallery.

 

[Fred.]

I hate the infinite scrolling on Facebook because sometimes you scroll down 300 pages and then suddenly the page isn't loading anymore.
The solution: Scroll down the 300 pages again and hope the page loads.
Just give me buttons please.

 

[Jeremy P]

It can be implemented better to minimize that sort of thing. If every page you scroll adds a marker to the URL with a pushState event, and there are handlers in place to check the marker and load the pertinent "page" on any subsequent refreshes/links, then that wouldn't happen.

A "try again" button when an error occurs would also help.

 

[CyberAP]

I think you need another software. Check out discourse.

 

[high1976]

Forums need pagination to provide good reference points for content. Imagine reading a thread then having to scroll through 300 posts to find where you were last up to? God no!

imho bad example: Now you have to click 30 times (10 posts per page) to read this stuff, not much more user friendly. Inf. scrolling would save a lot of time here that you usualy loose on clicking, reloading the whole page, scrolling to the 'next'-button aso. Your issue can easily be solved with a little jumpbox with post-numbers instead of pages ('jump to: post 300')

 

[Moshe1010]

Infinite scrolling is a good feature in my opinion. And to those who said it's hard to reference to a content at page 300, you can have both pagination and infinite scrolling at the same time - they don't cancel each other.

 

[Paul B]

I would switch software if it changed to infinite scrolling.

I loathe it.

 

[high1976]

I would switch software if it changed to infinite scrolling.
I loathe it.

depends on how it's done
Created a private concept several months ago within XF where threadstart-post scrolls till it reach top and then resize to a snippet (so you never loose title, author from focus) with inf. scrolling posts in the middle and bottom a fixed editor-box.
We run some tests on 15-30 pages threads with several testers and it was impressive how much time you safe reading all content. *Click*-*Scroll*-*Click*-*Scroll* aso frustrated most testers that are not long-time forum users. So as trying to Quote over dif. pages and all the related flaws of old fashioned forums.
Sadly the coder is not active anymore...that was a great new experience to XF in usability (even it was just an early concept)...

 

[Martok]

So how exactly does infinite scroll help usability when someone's wants to skip the first 30 or 40 threads/posts and jump directly to earlier ones? With pagination I can just click on page 3 or 4 to do this. With infinite scroll (at least the implementations I've seen such as on Facebook) I have to just keep on scrolling and scrolling to get what I want, which I dislike.

 

[high1976]

So how exactly does infinite scroll help usability when someone's wants to skip the first 30 or 40 threads/posts and jump directly to earlier ones? With pagination I can just click on page 3 or 4 to do this. With infinite scroll (at least the implementations I've seen such as on Facebook) I have to just keep on scrolling and scrolling to get what I want, which I dislike.

don't use facebook as a reference, it's not a forum with a completely different struture/intention.
If you replace pagenumber by postnumber you have your solution to prevent endless scrolling. Theres no difference if you jump to post 300 or to page 30.

 

[Martok]

don't use facebook as a reference, it's not a forum with a completely different struture/intention.
If you replace pagenumber by postnumber you have your solution to prevent endless scrolling. Theres no difference if you jump to post 300 or to page 30.

And how exactly do you jump to the post number that you require?

 

[high1976]

And how exactly do you jump to the post number that you require?

there are at least 20 possible options but if it's really necessary to understand the concept use this one:

entering a number 'scrolls' directly to this position in the thread, nothing more

 

[Martok]

there are at least 20 possible options but if it's really necessary to understand the concept use this one:
View attachment 117929
entering a number 'scrolls' directly to this position in the thread, nothing more

That of course is a mock-up. Have you seen any *real* examples of this working on forum software? The only one I can think of is Discourse, which requires you to type in a number. This I don't think is particularly friendly, especially to mobile users.