XF 2.2 Welcome to XenForo 2.2 / What's still to come

We've spent the last few weeks talking about the new features in XenForo 2.2. Now, it's your first chance to try some of them out and help us put them through their paces. Welcome to XenForo 2.2!

As you may notice, we have started converting some of our forums to more specific forum types. We've also enabled all general discussion thread types in the testing forum.

What's still to come

While our previous "have you seen" threads have announced most of what's coming in XenForo 2.2, we haven't touched on our official add-ons. There are improvements coming to each of them (beyond getting support for changes we already announced in 2.2), but we're not quite ready to announce these changes yet. Until we do, what you see running here is essentially the same as the 2.1-based version of our add-ons.

Beyond the add-ons, we still have a few more improvements to XenForo 2.2 itself that are still in the oven right now. These include improvements based on feedback we've received from the previous have you seens and some improvements to things we haven't touched on yet.

Keep your eyes peeled! (Disclaimer: please do not actually peel your eyes.)

Next steps

We're now starting the first steps towards releasing XenForo 2.2 by testing it here. So please, if you notice any bugs or problems, report them to us.

Once we finish off the changes we still have in the pipeline and are happy with the stability of 2.2, the first beta will be released to all customers with active licenses. Beta versions are not officially supported and we don't recommend running them on production installs. This is an opportunity for people to test and for resource authors to make the necessary changes to support the new version. From there, we'll continue releasing beta versions until we're ready to move onto the release candidate stage, which essentially means that we believe the version is close to being an officially supported release (but it's not yet!). Finally, and only once we've gone through each of these stages, XenForo 2.2.0 will be released as an officially supported/recommended release... and we can all celebrate!

But in the meantime, we still have work to do!

 

[Mike]

Honestly there's more to it than potential for abuse. It's more about the likelihood of it being used improperly. If you don't want a feature, that's not a reason to downvote it -- you should ignore it. But this isn't how people will use it.

The proper use would generally be that you disagree with a feature not because you don't want it, but because you actively think it's a bad idea. This is generally something that needs to be explained anyway, that's why we ask people to downvote.

 

[cdub]

It's more about the likelihood of it being used improperly. If you don't want a feature, that's not a reason to downvote it -- you should ignore it. But this isn't how people will use it.

The proper use would generally be that you disagree with a feature not because you don't want it, but because you actively think it's a bad idea.

This could easily be explained and solved via a notice.

 

[beerForo]

We all know how notices and explaining goes.

 

[PS5Forum]

@Mike @Kier

I was testing this in the testing forum, and I realized that "Spoiler" (check the edit button, to see what I put in there. Below is example.)
You should see "Inserting the spoiler normally like this makes the whole spoiler empty....? Intentional?" there, but it's empty.

Once I press the strikeout eye, it brings up the spoiler dialogue, and once I press "confirm" it doesn't show up publicly. +scratches head+

Am I missing something or is there like a next step to it?

 

[PS5Forum]

This could easily be explained and solved via a notice.

I think what Mike is saying is that it's common sense. This is obviously taking a competitive jab at Discourse, and Reddit for that matter.

 

[SoulReplicant]

By the way, clicking on an article link (like this one) doesn't get me to the unread posts of it. It only gets me to the article's comments first page. If the article has many comment pages I need to guess what the unread posts are. Yes, I already see the little "replies" link on the article block title at the bottom right but it's a killer UX behavior.

This is not the same for the other thread types (suggestions, questions, etc)

I already put it in a suggestion

Article's link pointing to its unread posts

Until 2.1 every thread link pointed to the unread posts of it. If it was a new thread for you, it directed you to the thread starting post. With the introduction of thread types, an article type doesn't have this behavior. It always gets you to the article's first page of comments. It doesn't...

xenforo.com

 

[Dad.]

.it’s not about how it will look with me. The fact is that in 2020 you are doing an update that returns us in 2010)

As a UI designer, this is not at all accurate. Editor before looked liked it was from idk 2017 or so. New one very much looks 2020+. You are probably thinking about editors that only have emoji or attachment buttons on left and right. But this won't work for a forum. The editor seems extremely well thought out. Moreso than any other editor I have ever seen before.

 

[beerForo]

By the way, clicking on an article link (like this one) doesn't get me to the unread posts of it. It only gets me to the article's comments first page. If the article has many comment pages I need to guess what the unread posts are. Yes, I already see the little "replies" link on the article block title at the bottom right but it's a killer UX behavior.

This is not the same for the other thread types (suggestions, questions, etc)

I already put it in a suggestion

Article's link pointing to its unread posts

Until 2.1 every thread link pointed to the unread posts of it. If it was a new thread for you, it directed you to the thread starting post. With the introduction of thread types, an article type doesn't have this behavior. It always gets you to the article's first page of comments. It doesn't...

xenforo.com

I had an issue too. I clicked to open this thread this morning but didn't read it and clicked again later and I was on page 2 but it had 5 pages. Is this some new function that assumes you read that page so it bumps you up to the next instead of the newest post? Because I could not get to the newest even though posts were made.

 

[PS5Forum]

I was clicking threads sometimes and it takes a little time for xenForo to fetch thread details. You'll be greeted to the orange/yellow line at the top for a while until it loads. Just an F.Y.I.

Windows 10 latest update
Firefox 77.0.1

 

[Mike]

I think what Mike is saying is that it's common sense. This is obviously taking a competitive jab at Discourse, and Reddit for that matter.

It's not really a competitive jab at anything. Indeed, in communities that use up/down voting systems, you'll see similar comments, imploring people to use downvote "correctly", rather than downvoting something they don't like for whatever reason (ideological difference most commonly).

We support downvoting for suggestions, but it isn't something we're using here. If 100 people say they want a feature (which would be fairly high in terms of the number of votes we get on suggestions), it doesn't really matter if X people are saying they don't want the feature -- it's still a highly requested feature for at least some portion of our customer base. It should be clear that not everyone is going to be interested in every feature we might implement.

If you think the suggestion is bad for some reason to the point that you actively oppose it, we'd always recommend explaining this in the thread and it would certainly be read by the development team.

 

[Chris D]

It's not a strange take. It was the biggest new feature of your suggestion forum feature.

And you're not using it on your suggestion forum. Without downvotes it's the same as likes and the old system.

Doesn't make sense.

Downvoting suggestions is not the biggest feature of our suggestion forum type.

Displaying suggestions like suggestions, displaying a clear indication of the count of votes, providing an unambiguous way to vote are the major features of the suggestion type forum. To be fair, they're probably the only features we wanted. We added downvoting because everyone would want that, and because we thought some forums might have use cases for that.

To strip down the feature to be "oh it's threads that can be downvoted" shows quite a major misunderstanding of the concept to be honest.

 

[sbj]

You need to give this community more credit than that. 99.9% of this community would not do what I quoted. And if I (for example) have enough members not like me to put any suggestions I make into a record setting negative number I think I would have been banned, or at the least be ignored by so many members my suggestions would have no to little activity, anyways.

Again ridiculous. Release the Kraken. The above can be handled through good moderation.

If there's no downvote than what's the point?

I think you underestimate people. I once said to someone with all respect my opinion about a topic (nothing personal) here on XF and he still holds grudges against me after months and writes subtly provoking messages. I ignore them. Now, of course you guys are liked members, you won't see an impact but if you are a controversial user, people will abuse the system to damage you. I have seen so many things in years that people have no limits. They will abuse the system. For you -1 is not significant but seeing that many threads have very low voting numbers, it makes a difference. Another problem is that we cannot see who downvoted or upvoted. So you can get away with it without nobody noticing.

 

[cdub]

I think what Mike is saying is that it's common sense. This is obviously taking a competitive jab at Discourse, and Reddit for that matter.

From a users perspective not having down votes makes it very similar to and redundant to reactions.

But I guess I'm not winning anyone over with these arguments so I'm going to drop it for now.

 

[cdub]

Downvoting suggestions is not the biggest feature of our suggestion forum type.

Displaying suggestions like suggestions, displaying a clear indication of the count of votes, providing an unambiguous way to vote are the major features of the suggestion type forum. To be fair, they're probably the only features we wanted. We added downvoting because everyone would want that, and because we thought some forums might have use cases for that.

To strip down the feature to be "oh it's threads that can be downvoted" shows quite a major misunderstanding of the concept to be honest.

I see your reasoning. Thank you.

 

[PS5Forum]

It's not really a competitive jab at anything. Indeed, in communities that use up/down voting systems, you'll see similar comments, imploring people to use downvote "correctly", rather than downvoting something they don't like for whatever reason (ideological difference most commonly).

We support downvoting for suggestions, but it isn't something we're using here. If 100 people say they want a feature (which would be fairly high in terms of the number of votes we get on suggestions), it doesn't really matter if X people are saying they don't want the feature -- it's still a highly requested feature for at least some portion of our customer base. It should be clear that not everyone is going to be interested in every feature we might implement.

If you think the suggestion is bad for some reason to the point that you actively oppose it, we'd always recommend explaining this in the thread and it would certainly be read by the development team.

Well, the way I see it, it's a growing...

It's a growing feature that people know how to use. +shrugs+ I was actually on your side. Reddit doesn't even have a notice saying to use the up/down button correctly. It's implied, and people interact with it like you would on Quora. Even Quora doesn't tell you to how to use it. The thing is, though... the upvote/downvote system can also be abused to "cancel" users. So, I see both sides of the coin.

Just an observation, is all.

 

[Taylor J]

To continue on with the editor, I actually really like the look of it when you're not actively using it or have clicked in it compared to when you are.

Not clicked in the editor box

Compared to when you are in the box

 

[021]

As a UI designer, this is not at all accurate. Editor before looked liked it was from idk 2017 or so. New one very much looks 2020+. You are probably thinking about editors that only have emoji or attachment buttons on left and right. But this won't work for a forum. The editor seems extremely well thought out. Moreso than any other editor I have ever seen before.

.you are talking about functions, and I'm talking about appearance. I described UI problems here.

Of the more or less significant innovations in editor, the XF team is the rendering of quotes.
All other functions are a consequence of the froala editor update.
Most of the features that were introduced directly by the developers have problems.

 

[PS5Forum]

From a users perspective not having down votes makes it very similar to and redundant to reactions.

But I guess I'm not winning anyone over with these arguments so I'm going to drop it for now.

I see what you mean, but they have different ideas. Like, in Kier's video where he talks about it... it shows a popular tab. So, the more people upvote the thread, the more popular it is. It's kinda like the star system that has been used on some platforms including vBulletin. Thing is, with vBulletin... even going far backwards to vB3, the idea was not correctly implemented. However, here with XF2.2, we actually got what we want. Reactions is just reacting to the post or thread. I mean, it sounds redundant, but not really.

 

[021]

To continue on with the editor, I actually really like the look of it when you're not actively using it or have clicked in it compared to when you are.

Not clicked in the editor box
View attachment 228765

Compared to when you are in the box
View attachment 228766

.everything spoils the gradient, which developers do not want to remove

 

[cdub]

On a related note I see our likes were converted to upvotes on the suggestion forum?

Is this going to be an upgrade option when converting forums? Both for suggestions and questions forums?