Forum updates & features - Rework of several menus

[Canapin]

A new forum software update has shipped with minor changes.

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The real-time search that showed results at the same time as you were typing keywords is gone forever, for performance reasons. It stills displays results among usernames, tags, and category names in real-time though.
However, to display posts results, you must now press Enter or click the line below the search input:

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The search bar now remembers your last searches for quick access:

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Searching with Ctrl-F while being on a long topic in which all posts aren’t loaded still opens the Discourse search, but it mentions more clearly than before that you’ll be searching inside the current topic:

If you don’t like how it behaves, you can still use the key F3 on many browsers to open the native browser search (but it will then search only in the loaded posts, not in the entire topic).

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When reading a long post, the author’s avatar will now scroll down along the post:

As you can see, they are small changes. There are other numerous changes or addition, but nothing worth being mentioned here as they won’t change your forum browsing experience in any way.

[lightbulbjim]

@Canapin

If you don’t like how it behaves, you can still use the key F3 on many browsers to open the native browser search (but it will then search only on the loaded posts, not on the entire topic).

You can also press CTRL+F (CMD+F on a Mac) twice

[Maxence]

@lightbulbjim

You can also press CTRL+F (CMD+F on a Mac) twice

Depending on your browser, it could open the browser native search interface or the Discourse search interface, while F3 should always open your browser native search interface.

[lightbulbjim]

Hmm, I’m sure it used to be that way. Maybe it has changed.

Actually I guess it has changed, this is the search shortcut listed for me now:

Anyway, I don’t want to drag this off topic.

[Canapin]

@Maxence

Depending on your browser, it could open the browser native search interface or the Discourse search interface

You may have missed the “twice” part? On Chrome, pressing twice Ctrl-F indeed switches from the Discourse search to the browser search. You can try on a long thread, such as this one.

I didn’t know this double shortcut trick, thanks @lightbulbjim.

[Maxence]

@Canapin

You may have missed the “twice” part?

I have totally missed it!
Thanks for pointing it out!

[Canapin]

A small update was applied and added new emojis.

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So… You can now revive mammoths (and dodos!)

And also revive polar bears when they’ll be soon extinct.

What more could one ask?

[Maxence]

@Canapin

And also revive polar bears when they’ll be soon extinct.

[Canapin]

You can now embed Instagram posts. It will show a preview. Clicking the media will redirect you to Instagram, which means that you can’t play the video directly on the forum post, but that’s better than nothing

Video:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CX_lIBNI-yC/
(there’s a tall white space at the bottom , but I can’t fix this)

Picture:
https://www.instagram.com/p/Cf9MHYosgoB/

Gallery:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CgCkwu8ueDF/

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(very minor feature)
Also, you can now edit your pictures upload titles directly in the post editor preview:

Images titles are used in place of the pictures when they are not shown, for example in an excerpt.

Example with pictures of which titles weren’t set (it uses the file name by default):

Pictures of your latest ride continued

The Golden (brown) Hills of California. They’re out there mowing to reduce fire danger. In the center left you can just barely see the Stanford dish. This park has a 3D exhibit which is fun to examine. [PXL_20220710_235250242][PXL_20220711_001335431]

Example with a picture of which the title was manually set (A beautiful magpie):

I ran over a...

It reminds a weird encounter I made 2 months ago. It’s off-topic, but well. I was on a walk with a friend and a magpie landed on a stone wall just next to us. We stopped and looked at it, and it was doing the same. It was very close, less than 50cm from us. After looking at each other for a while, I took a picture. [A beautiful magpie] The beautiful bird didn’t fly away, so I tried to pet him gently on the head (yeah, I know, I shouldn’t do that). The magpie didn’t seem to like that and, l…

Obviously, only a few people will take the time to rename their pictures, but since the feature is here, it’s worth mentioning it.

[mowcius]

Is it just me or do those Instagram embeds not work on mobile?

(Android 12, Firefox mobile)

[Canapin]

I don’t know. It works on Chrome on Android 8.

Can you take a screenshot?

[Maxence]

Check you haven’t enabled “strict mode” (which may now be the default behavior on Firefox). It disables any external content from social networks. And prevents them from tracking you.

[mowcius]

Right you are. I did indeed have that enabled, and changing the setting has made them appear.

[Canapin]

Creating tables with the formatting syntax on this forum is tedious (unless you really like pipes and dashes, I won’t judge).

I’ve added a tool that adds two features.

1. You can now create a table with a visual editor:
   

2. You can edit existing tables directly from the posts (however, you can’t edit them with the visual editor from the message composer, it remains the realm of pipes and dashes):
   

Use right-click to display the builder actions like adding or removing rows and columns.

The table builder is a brand-new feature. There are a few bugs, and the builder will be improved over time.

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Unrelated, you can now delete a picture directly from the message preview when using the post composer:

[mowcius]

Oh so that’s why you edited the table. I did wonder, and thought your addition of just larger heading text was a little odd.

I like it. I suspect many people might struggle to even find | on the keyboard, so I can see this being very useful.

[Canapin]

Yeah, because the table now have a large top padding because of the button, I changed the table titles so the readibility (is that a proper word?) is a bit better. I did a few tests…

Table Builder

[Canapin]

I’ve temporarily disabled the table builder. As a brand new feature, there are a few bugs that can break tables, so I’ll wait for them to be fixed before re-enabling the feature.

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Table builder’s back.

[Canapin]

Hi!

The forum software is evolving - a bit - again.

The Hamburger menu has been reworked.

From:

To:

It has new shortcuts, you can customize which categories you want to have shortcuts to, and there’s also a direct link to your personal messages at the bottom.

There is a setting that I can enable that will make this menu a togglable sidebar. The sidebar will be shown until you click the hamburger again, so everyone can choose if they want or not have the sidebar on screen.

It would look like this:

Since this setting affects everyone, I’ll make a poll in the future so you can choose if you prefer to have this togglable sidebar (it implies the hamburger icon before the forum’s logo) or not.
Or maybe I’ll activate it as a sidebar for some time (like 2 weeks, a month?) and see what you prefer after trying both options.

In either case, the sidebar is automatically disabled on mobile.

As the sidebar contains links to categories, I think it’s a good choice if you have, as the forum’s homepage, the latest topics instead of the categories + latest topics (default homepage).

You can change your own homepage in your preferences:

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Another revamped menu is your “personal menu” (does it even has a name? ), when you click on your avatar , in whch you can now filter your notifications by type:

Your “profile menu” (that’s a lot of menus…) is the last icon:

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They aren’t drastic changes, mostly layout tweaks and a bit more customizable options and filters. It should not change how you use the forum, except for power users.

And for mega-power users, you can use most of the forum’s features using keyboard shortcuts, try typing ? or click the keyboard icon at the bottom of the hamburger menu.