Lack of interest Responsive Design: No continuity between responsive and normal views

[Biker]

Habits die hard, and when switching from the notebook to the tablet, I find myself gritting my teeth in frustration because I expect certain items to remain in place.

With the normal view, Mark Forums Read is the first item under the tabs.

With the responsive view, Watched Forums becomes the first item and Mark Forums Read scurries off to the right to be hidden in the drop down menu. I don't know how many times I've tapped Watched Forums when I want to mark the forums as read.

Is this "as designed". If so, why? I would expect continuity between the two.

 

[Mike]

This is as designed as the goal was to keep new threads visible at all times while keeping it's middle position. There was a huge debate about the position of that link back in the 1.0 days. The original responsive code did keep the same link order, which ended up potentially hiding the watched/new links.

I'm going to move this to suggestions to see as really the only option I see to keep everything consistent would be to put the links in order of most important first--meaning they'd go on the left--and hiding left to right (as we did at the beginning of last week).

 

[jmurrayhead]

This is as designed as the goal was to keep new threads visible at all times while keeping it's middle position. There was a huge debate about the position of that link back in the 1.0 days. The original responsive code did keep the same link order, which ended up potentially hiding the watched/new links.

I'm going to move this to suggestions to see as really the only option I see to keep everything consistent would be to put the links in order of most important first--meaning they'd go on the left--and hiding left to right (as we did at the beginning of last week).

I think the right approach would be to keep the most important items first. Personally, I definitely click "New Threads" and "Watched Threads" a million more times than I click "Mark Forums Read". I definitely prefer to have the former.

 

[Biker]

I place equal importance on both New Threads and Mark Forums Read. I don't read every single thread, so the Mark Forums Read gets used almost as much as New Threads. And as you get a notification for watched threads, the Watched Thread link never gets used.

 

[jmurrayhead]

I place equal importance on both New Threads and Mark Forums Read. I don't read every single thread, so the Mark Forums Read gets used almost as much as New Threads. And as you get a notification for watched threads, the Watched Thread link never gets used.

It really is a personal preference. I rarely use Mark Forums Read. I want to look into my watched threads first and I do so quite frequently throughout the day. Then, I go to new threads to check out new stuff. At some point, I get tired of sifting through pages of new threads and only then do I use Mark Forums Read. Those are my personal browsing habits, though. It would be interesting to see the statistics of people using this site regarding this matter.

 

[Chris D]

One thought that entered my mind a few days ago was something similar to how Google do it.

Our responsive style currently hides the remaining nav links and they are then available in a drop down menu.

If you perform a search on the mobile version of Google, you can actually horizontally scroll the nav links. I think that would be an excellent solution for XenForo and potentially quite simple to implement.

It's intuitive and should ultimately cater for everyone because everything will be a short scroll away.

It could be done for the main nav tabs and the sub nav links too.

 

[jmurrayhead]

@Chris Deeming like this?

 

[Paul B]

That's a vertical navigation panel.

I think Chris just literally means to keep the nav bar the same and be able to scroll left and right to get to the link you want.

 

[jmurrayhead]

I see what he means, actually doing the search:

 

[Chris D]

Yeah @Brogan has it right - and yes, from the results page @jmurrayhead.

I can't think of a situation where it wouldn't be useful.

 

[jmurrayhead]

Yeah @Brogan has it right - and yes, from the results page @jmurrayhead.

I can't think of a situation where it wouldn't be useful.

I agree. It's really simple and effective. I'd go for that.