XF 2.1 Reactions 👍😍🤣😲🙁😡

Welcome to the third in our "Have you seen...?" series for XF 2.1. We've had a phenomenal, er, reaction, to what we've shown so far. In case you haven't seen our previous two entries, 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 poke here and enabling email notifications if you haven't done so already 🙂

Today we're going to show you something that we have been talking about doing internally for quite some time - content reactions. This concept has been popular with XF users for a long time and has spawned some popular add-ons. We have quite possibly been talking about doing it since long before it was popularised by Facebook so, finally, here we are 🙂

Let's first look at how Reactions are set up in the Admin CP:

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As you can see, we've not exactly gone overboard in terms of the reactions we're shipping by default, but this felt like a sensible selection. We've added a concept of being able to assign either "Positive", "Negative" or "Neutral" to each reaction and although some of the default reactions have negative connotations, we decided not to assign any of them as "Negative" by default.

But, let's look at adding a new negative "Dislike" reaction:

localhost_21x_admin.php_reactions_add.webp

The process here should be fairly familiar if you have ever added new smilies as it uses a very similar approach for referencing the image/sprite. For your convenience we have included a "Dislike" icon in the sprite sheet should you wish to add it yourselves.

Most of this is self explanatory, but you will see we can also specify a "Text color". You'll see this in action... now!

21reactions.gif

The behaviour of the "Like" button isn't significantly different. You can still just click/tap the button to give a like (or remove the selected reaction) but to access other reactions you can hover over the link (or tap and hold on touch devices) and a tooltip will be displayed with your active reactions.

The "Text color" value we mentioned before is applied here to indicate your selected reaction. It is also displayed in the alert templates for reactions:

Screenshot 2018-10-15 at 18.45.54.webp

We have also redesigned the reaction summary:

Screenshot 2018-10-15 at 18.58.33.webp

And the reaction overlay with a new tabbed design:

Screenshot 2018-10-15 at 19.02.20.webp

And, of course, Reactions are sent through push notifications (if not opted-out):

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We also show a summary of the most popular reactions (up to 3) on the thread list:

localhost_21x_index.php_forums_main-forum.2_.webp

Finally, you'll notice that the primary statistic listed on member list items, member tooltips and member statistics is no longer just a simple "like count" but instead we're now tracking an overall "Reaction score".

This metric is the total number of positive reactions minus the total number of negative reactions.

localhost_21x_index.php_members_&key=highest_reaction_score (1).webp

Most of this is self explanatory so we're probably ok to leave it there without going into too much detail.

Still quite a bit more to go, so we'll see you again later this week for more 🙂

Developers: you may be wondering about a few technical details. We have a special HYS for you guys in a couple of weeks focusing on a bit more detail for some miscellaneous power user/developer changes, so stay tuned for that!
 
All in all, great to see new development coming to XenForo. My main question though is why replace 2 addons (soon to be 3, as isnt Luke building his add-on currently?) from your loyal developers with only a fraction of the functionality?

I personally think this is a bit rude as developers are working on tools like these. Why not do the sensible thing with a roadmap?
We don't actually view it in terms of "replacing add-ons". We view it in terms of implementing the functionality that our customers are asking for and implementing them in the way that we feel it should be implemented.

In many cases, features will come into XF and be improved iteratively over time, and I'm sure you must be familiar with that approach as I'm sure your add-ons are not as fully featured as they are now in their first release.

I personally think this is a bit rude as developers are working on tools like these. Why not do the sensible thing with a roadmap?
To all intents and purposes this is our roadmap:

https://xenforo.com/community/forums/xenforo-suggestions.18/?order=first_post_likes&direction=desc

"Improve the like" button was on that first page before we moved it to "Implemented" earlier. Frankly, if you don't want to have add-ons replaced by core functionality, then don't work on stuff that is high up our roadmap. Or, at least, take a more pragmatic approach like @Xon and instead of looking at it as "rude" see it as an opportunity to build improvements on top of the core functionality where you feel it is lacking.
 
We don't actually view it in terms of "replacing add-ons". We view it in terms of implementing the functionality that our customers are asking for and implementing them in the way that we feel it should be implemented.

In many cases, features will come into XF and be improved iteratively over time, and I'm sure you must be familiar with that approach as I'm sure your add-ons are not as fully featured as they are now in their first release.


To all intents and purposes this is our roadmap:

https://xenforo.com/community/forums/xenforo-suggestions.18/?order=first_post_likes&direction=desc

"Improve the like" button was on that first page before we moved it to "Implemented" earlier. Frankly, if you don't want to have add-ons replaced by core functionality, then don't work on stuff that is high up our roadmap. Or, at least, take a more pragmatic approach like @Xon and instead of looking at it as "rude" see it as an opportunity to build improvements on top of the core functionality where you feel it is lacking.
Now no need to get defensive, your typical response is "formal formal formal somethingbackhanded"

I stand by it being a bit rude to do that and hand wavy to claim that a forum with 87 * 20 threads is your roadmap. Why not sort them? Upvote system? Third party system of some kind?

ETA: Oh wait, so you officially claim that sort by likes is the roadmap? I did not know that.
 
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I honestly did not know that that was your roadmap. This is indeed formally what you will be doing as I dont recall reading it. As that was my concern, I do not want to build things you are planning on building.

I still stand by it not being quite fair. Can you post on that issue that you started building it? I really would appreciate that consideration.
 
Let's calm down I would say. I do agree with @Mike Creuzer that it does feel like a backstab to see stuff implemented which someone's working on or has established for a while. Esp. because the Suggestions forum has barely any public comments from you like "we are working on it". Calling an uncommented forum as "Roadmap" is really something special :P. A Roadmap clearly communicates what is being worked on and when. No need for dates or something, but you know that it is being worked on at least.

And honestly, I didn't expect anything other than Push in XF2.1. I didn't even know that there was a real demand for the editor manager with having Lukas' addon.

So the point would be just to communicate more. Yea, it takes away the surprise a bit and people may start asking "when when when", but it also prevents frustration on our side.
 
I honestly did not know that that was your roadmap. This is indeed formally what you will be doing as I dont recall reading it. As that was my concern, I do not want to build things you are planning on building.

Of course it's not an actual roadmap. They've talked before about how some things might have less likes but be trivial to implement where some highly liked things (like a portal/CMS) are incredibly complex.
 
Of course it's not an actual roadmap. They've talked before about how some things might have less likes but be trivial to implement where some highly liked things (like a portal/CMS) are incredibly complex.
Sure sure, but thats just my point. If there were a thousand developers, Id shut up :P but there are like what 20 (active)? - not sure of entire list

@Chris D we are here to work on your software with you, I think we are owed that you've started working on a system. I don't mean to offend, Im coming from a place of considering what I should and shouldn't be doing. I really don't think its that unreasonable.
 
@Chris D we are here to work on your software with you, I think we are owed that you've started working on a system. I don't mean to offend, Im coming from a place of considering what I should and shouldn't be doing. I really don't think its that unreasonable.

There's also the fact that it's a commercial environment, do they really want to tell VB, etc what they're working on?

That's partly why I'm hoping there's something really secret/cool planned that hasb't been mentioned, rather than just pulling bits of addons into the core.
 
We have generally said that we take likes into account for suggestions (see the suggestions guide) and the link Chris provided is sorted by first post likes. The suggestion to implement reactions was within the top 15 suggestions of all time in that forum. You will see that many of the previous feature announcements (over various versions) have implemented features that were the most requested (liked) in that forum.

It is inevitable that virtually any feature we implement may be "stepping on someone's toes", but I don't think we should ever shy away from implementing a feature because an add-on developer has implemented their version of it. Add-ons will very often go further in a particular feature than a core system might (to cover a different target audience), so they can certainly always be scope for multiple implementations (or extensions) of a feature to exist.

It's worth noting that both of the XF2 implementations of reaction-like add-ons were out before 2.0 was even a stable release, presumably where development was happening during the dev previews. The state of an official implementation at that point wouldn't have even been started, let alone considered, so even if we were to say "working on it", that would've been a significantly later point.

I'll accept that we can do more regarding suggestions, and there are various things that we're looking into internally.
 
"Improve the like" button was on that first page before we moved it to "Implemented" earlier. Frankly, if you don't want to have add-ons replaced by core functionality, then don't work on stuff that is high up our roadmap.

My main conundrum was solved. I did not know that the suggestions forum (at least more or less) was indeed the roadmap, and that is my mistake. I am sorry @Chris D
 
We use Reactions by ThemeHouse - can we switch over to you all from this? Would HATE to lose thousands and thousands of Reactions lost.
Chris has already covered that they won't be creating importers from 3rd party add-ons. Please create a ticket on your developers support site.

FTR Xon has already stated he will be creating an importer once this core implementation goes public for his similar add-on.
 
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Fairly pointless. Just disable the ones you don't want.

That would require disabling all of them. Again keep in mind a business forums will not want Reactions at all. So what happens when all are disabled? Will Reactions be completely disabled? Again it would be so much better if there was a single checkbox to disable Reactions which some forums will not want enabled.
 
That would require disabling all of them. Again keep in mind a business forums will not want Reactions at all. So what happens when all are disabled? Will Reactions be completely disabled? Again it would be so much better if there was a single checkbox to disable Reactions which some forums will not want enabled.
Then simply remove the ability for anyone to use likes via the group permissions.
 
That would require disabling all of them. Again keep in mind a business forums will not want Reactions at all. So what happens when all are disabled? Will Reactions be completely disabled? Again it would be so much better if there was a single checkbox to disable Reactions which some forums will not want enabled.
You can’t disable all of them as the Like reaction is fixed, as it is now.

If you want Like but not the others then you just need to disable all but the Like reaction.

If you want to disable the ability to give and receive any reactions, including likes, then you just remove that permission as you can now with the Like system.
 
You can’t disable all of them as the Like reaction is fixed, as it is now.

If you want Like but not the others then you just need to disable all but the Like reaction.

If you want to disable the ability to give and receive any reactions, including likes, then you just remove that permission as you can now with the Like system.

On that note, if you have just like enabled does it still require the animated popup or can you just click that like button?
 
Again it would be so much better if there was a single checkbox to disable Reactions which some forums will not want enabled.
Does not make much sense to me, if only some forums would like to not use this feature it is easy for them just to disable the pre-configured reactions.
There is no need for a global switch if the vast majoriy would leave it "on" anyway, this would IMHO just add bloat to settings.
 
You can’t disable all of them as the Like reaction is fixed, as it is now.

Could you please add checkbox to disable Reactions and keep Likes. That way those that wish to keep the current Likes the way it is now can easily do so.

Thank you.
 
It’s the same system Andy. You’d just switch off the 5 additional reactions then you’re left with the same like system you have now.
 
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