New Discourse Scroll Bar Thing

Meta
1

I really don’t like the new discourse scroll bar. Does anyone know of a way to switch it back to the old version? It’s really frustrating me.

  • I can’t find an easy way to get to the last post anymore.
  • I can’t find a way to go to a specific post number.
  • It keeps sliding about and jumping around in the topic when I click it and I can’t seem to scroll properly while typing up a reply.
  • I still miss the old next page options as opposed to the endless scrolling we have here.
  • I don’t like change.

Can anyone help?

6 Likes
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I feel the same as you. Any input, @jasonstevanhill @dfabulich?

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I think this is more the discourse staff sort of thing.

I tried to write a response to a super-long pm thread I had, and I had real issues trying to reread old posts while typing up a response. It kept jumping about, wouldn’t let me scroll down to the bottom and I was going ARGHHH!!!

1 Like
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I’m on my phone, but I’m not having that problem. Click the little up/down arrows next to the post number.

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That’s not what it looks like on my desktop anymore @CitizenShawn. That’s how it used to look.

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Ah, I’m on my desktop now. That’s terrible! You can click and drag but that’s about it…

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A temporary workaround; resize your browser window so that it’s about the size of a phone, then the old tracker will pop up in the lower right corner.

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I think you’ll need to raise this discussion on meta.discourse.org. There’s a thread about it here https://meta.discourse.org/t/change-right-gutter-to-vertical-timeline-topic-controls/44096

FWIW, you can click and drag the timeline thingy to go to the last post or a specific post number. It seems to work for me on topics with a relatively small number of posts, like this one, but doesn’t work so well for very large threads like the Guns of Infinity thread.

(But remember that they now discourage us from having/using threads that big, for performance reasons, or something.)

I think your best bet is to report specific bugs on the meta forum, with exact steps to reproduce, including screenshots, and a clear statement of what you expect to happen and what actually happens.

3 Likes
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Also: on my Chrome desktop machine, it seems to go back to the old thing when you click Reply.

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Thanks so much for that link. I tried to find an appropriate link over there and couldn’t find it.

If someone else could post over there, I’d be seriously grateful.

It appears to go back but it doesn’t because you can’t actually select a specific post number or select go to bottom.

@CitizenShawn Ha your method of shrinking the window worked though. It’s not ideal though.

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Everyone: Hit the # key (Shift+3) and the old navigation will pop up :slight_smile: Press “?” for a list of other cool keyboard shortcuts.

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@CitizenShawn If I could give you a thousand likes for that post, I would. THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!

Of course it does rather look weird with both on the screen at the same time.

Also it’s only shift+3 on your fancy keyboard. On my uk keyboard the hash key is elsewhere, right next to the enter button.

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Even better :slight_smile: lol I use that key all the time and it’s still out of my way! I bet you can code mad *choices with your # key :wink:

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Yep! No need for a shift button for me. It’s just #####################

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@FairyGodfeather the new icon thingy works well as a quick scroll bar if you want to scroll up a page or two - at least for me. The old way used to feel ackward and sometimes “jumped” too far back especially in the large threads like GoI.

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I haven’t tried it in any of the large threads yet. I really, really miss the old option of just having pages instead of endless scroll. It’s awkward in my private messages though, and I just have a few hundred messages there.

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I would prefer this as well - seems more and more changes are phone orientated warranted or not.

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Wow. Just got onto laptop. Now about to go read that Discourse thread and find out why they thought this was a good idea…

Edit: I wonder how many other fora using Discourse have as many long threads as we do. It’s not just Guns of Infinity; you have to scroll down forty threads before you get to a thread with less than a thousand posts. Seems like a feature that would work a lot better on a less intensively used forum.

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It really seems to be touch-orientated to me. That is why I believe it is in support of phones and tablets and future wearables.

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Just tried it a little while ago, and it’s awkward to use. Can’t imagine what exactly prompted this change, as we have a lot of huge threads, and it seems counterproductive according to @dfabulich.
I’ll just have to try @CitizenShawn’s method later.

2 Likes