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:

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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!
 
We now have a style property which switches off the reaction summary on the thread list by default. But if you prefer to keep it, you can switch it to one of the other positions.

Second row, opposite side:
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With status icons:
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The original position has been removed.
 
Amazing so now it's native just few month after buying bookmarks and reactions addon from Theme house. Was asking also earlier in october for an addon using the reactions to make a contest on my board to offer gift to the 3 first winner who has obtained more positives reactions.
Now everything is available.

Never mind i really prefer natives functionalities
Here is my thread posted in september

Just a question ?
Is it possible to import reactions from the ThemeHouse Addon to the natives reactions. I really want to keep all the reactions obtained by my members since i use the theme house addon
Thanks and great job
 
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Same thing is here also 👊
I can see XF 2.1 included most of Theme house addon i do use 👍
What a great job @Chris D
I cant wait to see the new release 2.1

After talking with customers and others, I think we're going to keep it as is. We may rename to Reactions+ and extend what XenForo does. We will do an importer to theirs, use their data structure so we get add-on support, and then continue to add features. :)
 
I have now tried to like posts twice by trying to click on the reaction-icon bottom left.

Maybe the icons there should be clickable?

I also wonder if it could be a good idea to always show say six reaction-icons there, maybe with how many have used them and grayed out if not yet used. And some way to get up the others if there is more than six.

Then you could remove the Like-link, that maybe should be named Reactions if left?
 
I have now tried to like posts twice by trying to click on the reaction-icon bottom left.
That's just a summary of the reactions given, just like it always has been. I'm not sure why making that interactive would make any sense?

Then you could remove the Like-link, that maybe should be named Reactions if left?
The "Like" link is there because if you click it, it does indeed give a like, and that is likely to be the most commonly used reaction. Hovering over it (or tapping and holding on touch devices) gives you a list of reactions to choose from.

This is a very common user experience across many different apps/web apps which most users would be familiar with.
 
That's just a summary of the reactions given, just like it always has been. I'm not sure why making that interactive would make any sense?


The "Like" link is there because if you click it, it does indeed give a like, and that is likely to be the most commonly used reaction. Hovering over it (or tapping and holding on touch devices) gives you a list of reactions to choose from.

This is a very common user experience across many different apps/web apps which most users would be familiar with.
I know how it works right now, but I think it could be changed to make it easier to use and easier to understand and find/see for ordinary users.

I am not using any reactions-addon on my site now and I am not 100% sure I will use this when I upgrade to 2.1.

Not having tried to click on the like-icon bottom left before 2.1 probably has to do with it then being exactly the same as the like-icon. Now it is significantly more visible.
 
That's just a summary of the reactions given, just like it always has been. I'm not sure why making that interactive would make any sense?

I'd imagine this is going to be a pretty common thing to assume since other platforms with a similar system work this way (Slack and Discord mainly)
 
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.
I may have missed it, but will we be able to search "posts" for example by reactions? Maybe have a page that displays the most posts by reactions etc.?
 
What about an option to hide from the public view a specific reaction from the public view reaction summary? E.g. users can click on a "fake news" reaction, but only administrator can see if it has been used. This would be really useful, a way to have an idea about the quality of an user for admins.
 
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