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!

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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:

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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!
 
For stuff like that, @Xon could turn his Content Ratings AddOn into a Reactions Essentials AddOn! :D
I plan to keep my add-on around as it does a lot more than what has been shown in stock XF2.1, I'll need to rebuild it on top of XF2.1 however;

Once there is a public release I will write a converter to import into XF2 and will then rebuild this add-on on native XF2 feature set as this add-on adds considerable extra flexibility and features. This add-on will then likely be renamed Rating/Reactions Essentials or something similar.

I'm not sure if this will be an entirely new add-on release or just rename the existing one.
 
How will this effect third party add-ons that currently have likes implemented? Will they still function until they're upgraded to support reactions?
 
How will this effect third party add-ons that currently have likes implemented? Will they still function until they're upgraded to support reactions?
Yeah I mentioned it earlier. The Like system still very much exists. We'll go into more detail in a future HYS but essentially all of the UI/framework stuff for likes still exists, but the code feeds into the new Reaction code as much as possible. The xf_liked_content table is now the xf_reaction_content table and existing Like based systems will use that. Add-on developers will just need to implement the new UI/schema bits, new content type handler and that's about it :)
Great ... the next thing that let me honestly think about switching to from 1.5.x to 2.x . Good Job @Chris D :)
Team effort of course :)
Has anyone asked the obvious, why aren't font awesome icons an option? :)
Because they're pretty boring, frankly. But if you wanted them then you could always use the SVG files from FA5 free.
Will there be reaction criteria batch manage threads?
Only the same way there is now. The "First post likes" criteria becomes "First post reaction score".
 
Hi Chris,

I think forums which are business oriented will not want to use Reactions. I assume to disable them the admin would have to disable or delete the Reactions on this page.

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It would be nice to have in the Setup -> Options a master Enable/Disable for Reactions.
 
I plan to keep my add-on around as it does a lot more than what has been shown in stock XF2.1
How will this effect third party add-ons that currently have likes implemented? Will they still function until they're upgraded to support reactions?
It's disappointing to me that this has happened. It takes away from add on dev's who we have relied on to develop these like items to enhance our forums.
What other items are planned to be added to xf bass that will compete with add on devs?
The only saving grace in this case is that Xon will continue working on his add on which "does a lot more than what has been shown in stock XF2.1" than xf is willing to enhance.
 
Been holding off upgrading because of reactions :)

The only thing I dont like is the hovering over the like button similar to FB in order to show them, feels awkward on mobile for people with fat thumbs. Be nice to have simple row of them to choose from even if its restricted for people with loads.
 
It's disappointing to me that this has happened. It takes away from add on dev's who we have relied on to develop these like items to enhance our forums.
What other items are planned to be added to xf bass that will compete with add on devs?
The only saving grace in this case is that Xon will continue working on his add on which "does a lot more than what has been shown in stock XF2.1" than xf is willing to enhance.
It’s far better being in the core as any developer can now use the reactions with their content type of their addon instead of tacking on something from yet another addon. There is still a place for reaction addons just in another form...
 
It would be nice to have in the Setup -> Options a master Enable/Disable for Reactions.
Fairly pointless. Just disable the ones you don't want.

@Chris D What chrome skin are you using C:?
Hehe @Kier asked me that earlier. I was just in incognito mode in one of the screenshots because I was switching between multiple accounts :)

What other items are planned to be added to xf bass that will compete with add on devs?
It's not about competing. It's about providing the functionality that users have been asking us for for many years. Developers should go into the new development of an add-on with the understanding that, especially if it's something that has been suggested before, we might at some point fulfil that functionality.

It's honestly like we can't win sometimes. We don't implement features people ask for, and we get negativity about it. We do, and then we get negativity about it.

Been holding off upgrading because of reactions :)
And yet, at the same time, (this is directed towards @Bionic Rooster) it is clear that some people do want us to implement these things in the core rather than relying on add-ons which may or may not be around for the long term.
 
Possible to show actual count per reaction on the post itself? For example 2 x likes, 5 x Haha, 7x Angry?
Right, and a profile summary of all the different reactions (by reaction type) a person has received and given....? Also, an option for users to give more than one reaction..?
 
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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?
 
I see the need for this addon, probably the most popular paid addon of XF1 and it spawned 2 popular 2.0 addons.

It is actually a good thing that those things are taken over officially, it is not a bad thing that popular addons are added to the core, indeed it is a good thing and so far all 3 additions were good choices. My problem with this is, that if you port them over, at least do it in a "feature-rich" way, where you exceed the existing solutions. But this were not the case for either of those 3 (widget, reactions, editor).
The most exciting thing I have seen so far was the markup support which was not predictable. I don't understand why reactions has just the bare minimum like the others? Not even widgets from what I read.

But overall I think most board owners will be glad to have this in the core.
 
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