Loomio

Refactoring the Single Post View

ST Sean Tilley Public Seen by 96

As some of you know, I've been doing some work on the Single Post View. Both Mr ZYX and Denschub have had suggestions about ways to approach this, so I wanted to put together some mockups on our wiki.

Before any more coding / refactoring is done to the SPV, let's discuss what we as developers and end users want from the single post view, and let's explore ways to make it more usable.

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Flaburgan Mon 25 Feb 2013 5:56PM

The first one is more text oriented and the second one more picture oriented. For me, the error of our first single post view was to be too much picture oriented. Your current (the first) proposition is almost perfect for people who uses Diaspora as a blog (and many people does that). Another point : the second one looks exactly like libertree. So for me, the first one is better.

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goob Mon 25 Feb 2013 6:11PM

I think the beta view was an excellent idea which was never developed enough to be really usable. In a way it would be a shame to see it go completely. I wonder whether the 'finished' version could be back-ported from Makrio, which is what Dan used it for?

It's good, and really elegant, for image-only posts or 'mainly image' posts with a little bit of text, but is too inflexible.

A user should be able to choose how the text displays over the image, as they can in Makrio.

Also, that beta view should be only one of several options - ideally the software would decide whether a post is image-heavy (and then show the beta view) or text-heavy (and then show a more text-based layout).

Those are my ideas for 'saving' the beta view. It was something new for a social network, and can be really elegant, so I'd like to think of ways it can be integrated into D* in a way which doesn't cause people problems, if this is possible.

We certainly need it not to be the only option for displaying single posts, as for many posts it is just unworkable.

Both your versions look quite good, as Fla says each would work better for different types of post. The first for a longer blog-style post, the second for a shorter one. Alternatively, they could be two options that each user can choose in their settings how they will see single-post views.

Will read others' thoughts and then come back to this.

TS

Tom Scott Mon 25 Feb 2013 7:33PM

I like the first mockup, and I felt that was really reminiscent of the initial implementation of this view. I think that view looks really modern and I really wouldn't mind using that and permutations of it as the main UI for our site, even in the "Stream" view (though with a bit less "chrome", perhaps).

That second view just looks silly to me. It implies some kind of real-time communication, or chat dialog going on. But it does raise the question: Is the single-post view supposed to be for viewing the original posted contents, or the comments that follow it? What exactly are we trying to emphasize here?

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Elm Mon 25 Feb 2013 8:02PM

Not sure to understand the first mockups : is the second image the far bottom of the post or is it an expandable/hideable tray (so, larger than the existing one), while the content of the post is independently scrollable ?

Both propositions looks promising to me…

JH

Jonne Haß Mon 25 Feb 2013 9:02PM

I do think the single post view is about communication and not about presentation, it's the stream that presents, where you discover things, it's the single post view where you interact, communicate. If that's not the case we should stop linking it from the notifications.

I also don't really like this boxed design approaches with lots of empty space, to be honest.

And what's this debate about how to present a post, on what we consider more important, text or pictures? What are we trying to solve here? The best way to take decisions from the user? We already have the best way possible for a user to make a post look like he wants: Markdown. Lets just render that cleanly out, lets not cripple it. Trying to make design decisions for the user resulted in the current situation. It showed that we can't predict the content.

So, I also was serious about reusing the elements we have in the stream already and iterate then on them. Lets reenable communication in the single post view first and then make it sexy. Step by step.

So I added some mockups to that page. Very rough ones. I'm not a designer, I never will be. Because I suck at it. Anyway you might want to take a look. Don't expect me to work over those again though, they're ideas, not "It should look like this!" stuff.

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Elm Mon 25 Feb 2013 9:17PM

I like Jonne mockups. It is the same as sean’s second one without the libertree like boxes.

But Goob idea to later have a choice between this and an improved version of the existing one is interesting too (but demand more work).

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hewiak Mon 25 Feb 2013 9:54PM

Jonne's mockup is interesting. I tried one with the media left 1/3-ish.

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matl Mon 25 Feb 2013 10:04PM

I like the last one :)

ST

Sean Tilley Mon 25 Feb 2013 10:15PM

I like Jonne's last mockup, I think it makes better use of space than my alternate one. I also liked the layout and taking the iconified approach of my alternate proposal.

Perhaps I could take another stab at my alternate to reconcile the differences between Jonne's design and my own, stripping a little of the extra chrome off? :)

I'll try and get something up in a little bit.

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Flaburgan Mon 25 Feb 2013 10:40PM

@jonne : why separate the place where you like / reshare / comment (you place it at the top on the left frame) to the place where you show who liked, reshared and commented (on the right). This looks weird and non intuitive to me. We can go with your idea but I think that the original post should take more place (like 2/3) and every interactions should be in the other frame.

But really, I love the idea of the first mockup, a page like a book. But we should improve the way the interaction div is displayed.

@goob we are not talking about the beta profile (which is perfect for images, so could be turn to a photo album) but about the single post view.

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