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Comment by vthriller | Hacker News Reader

I think "show me every parent message prior to this one" would be a better way to describe the feature that I occasionally miss in every implementation of threaded conversations. Sibling folding is just one of the ways to implement that.

The problem is that in very large threads it's quite hard to remind yourself about the context of the conversation that you're currently reading: you either need to scroll a lot to get to some grand-grandparent and back, or start manually folding messages above, one by one, subthread by subthread, until the context gets uncluttered.

Let met illustrate what I was describing: https://i.imgur.com/pm1SIRJ.png?r (You could imagine way more replies in those shaded areas—a situation that is not that uncommon here on HN.)

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> remind yourself about the context of the conversation > Let met illustrate [...]

Thanks for showing / clarifying. I have the precise same problem (here at HN mostly).

> "show me every parent message prior to this one"

> Sibling folding is just one of the ways to implement that.

3 ideas:

1. What if, at the top of the page, there were buttons like "Scroll to parent"? So that when you look up, to see if you can see the parent post there somewhere, then, instead you see a "Scroll to parent" button. — Once one has scrolled to the parent, maybe to the grandparent, there's a Back button to scroll back down and continue reading.

2. What about keyboard shortcuts? If you click 'P', the page could scroll to the Parent. 'P' once more, scrolls to the grandparent. 'B' scrolls back down to the parent, 'B' again scrolls back so you can continue reading. (But how would Talkyard know which post, of many, you're reading, if the screen is large? How know which parent, of many possible, you have in mind? Maybe there could be one Scroll to Parent button per indentation depth)

3. A button "Show ansectors", for every post. Click it, and Talkyard would popup a dialog, with all ancestors (parent, grandparent, ...) and you could scroll up-up-up inside the dialog and have a look, and close it, once you're done reading — without affecting your scroll position on the "real" page.

> 2. What about keyboard shortcuts?

That just would not work on smartphones.

> But how would Talkyard know which post, of many, you're reading, if the screen is large

One way is to implement arrow-key navigation and highlight current message in some way (border, bgcolor or whatever), but I'm not sure if that would work well outside of some special keyboard-centric navigation mode designed to cater to fans of software like mutt or vimperator.

Zulip comes to mind: in there selected message affects what topic people are going to reply into, and if people are not used to that feature (or to the idea of chats with topics in general), they can easily dismiss or fail to notice that very selection and treat the input box just like they would that in any other chat app, which would result in misdirected replies. Some teams are fine with spending some time babysitting the conversation (change topics of other people's replies after the fact, teach colleagues how to use that particular software etc.), but others would just switch to simpler software, with flatter conversations and/or less navigation features.

> 1. What if, at the top of the page, there were buttons like "Scroll to parent"?

Do you talk about the very top of the whole page (scroll position 0) or about sticky header at the top of the viewport? If it's the latter, then it's going to be as problematic as keyboard shortcuts (i.e. can't decide which message's parent we need to jump and where to return to).

> 3. A button "Show ansectors", for every post. Click it, and Talkyard would popup a dialog, with all ancestors (parent, grandparent, ...)

That implementations seems to be both the most robust and the easiest to implement.

>> A button "Show ansectors"

> That implementations seems to be both the most robust and the easiest to implement

I think so too. I'd like to implement it.

If you want to, you could send me an email (see my profile)? Then I can send you an email, once I've built this ( >= 2 weeks), if you'd like to see how it works & maybe have feedback

\* * *

> arrow-key navigation and highlight current message in some way

I've thought about that some times. Could also be nice for people with accessibilyty problems? (e.g. shaky hands, keyboard navigation better than the mouse pointer)

If the screen is small, e.g. on mobile, Talkyard could probably be pretty certain which post one is currently reading, so might work ok well, automatically.

> not sure if that would work well outside of some special keyboard-centric navigation mode

Yes, maybe this would be for power users and people with disabilities.

> but others would just switch to simpler software, with flatter conversations and/or less navigation features

I suppose such power user navigation things, should be disabled by default.

\* * *

> sticky header at the top of the viewport?

Yes

> going to be as problematic as keyboard shortcuts (i.e. can't decide which message's parent we need to jump and where to return to).

This is also related to highlighting the post one is reading — there'd be one specific parent post to jump to, when pressing 'P'(arten).

Could also experiment with mouse pointing on a post, to make it the keyboard target. And then pressing 'P' to jump to its parent.

\* * *

> Zulip comes to mind: in there selected message affects what topic people are going to reply into [ ...] result in misdirected replies

Now I'm wondering if this is a reason why e.g. Mattermost is more popular than Zulip.

Maybe it's not only that Mattermost is better at marketing (are they?) but also that they are less "power user focused"?

> If the screen is small, e.g. on mobile, Talkyard could probably be pretty certain which post one is currently reading, so might work ok well, automatically.

Modern smartphones easily fit a couple of comments on a screen, at least here on HN and on that forum that I mentioned in the other thread. Heck, I just dug out a 3rd-gen iPod Touch just to see how these websites look on its comparatively small screen. The result is that even devices with comparable screens (think iPhone 4S and other phones of that time) can occasionally fit a number of one-liners or, depending on a font size, a couple of longer comments.

The trick might still work though if you prefer much larger fonts, but otherwise smartphones don't make this feature easier to implement.

----

Speaking of mobile: I once experimented with showing replies one at a time. It did a good job at keeping the context around, looked and worked well on mobile devices, but I'm pretty sure it would make harder to find new comments, skim over discussions (and, say, find interesting/insightful comments just by scrolling around), and probably worsen experience in some other way. You can have a look over at https://vthriller.github.io/tmp-hn-comments/carousel.html

> Could also experiment with mouse pointing on a post, to make it the keyboard target. And then pressing 'P' to jump to its parent.

People often prefer keyboard navigation because they want to minimize palm movement as much as possible, and that means reduction of mouse usage as well. Aside from that, if mouse is in your hand already, you might as well click on an on-screen button near the comment—that would be faster than bringing palm back to keyboard.

You might want to try to mitigate that by switching binding to a key on the other half of the keyboard, so that it can be pressed with the other hand, but even then only a handful of people that spend hours navigating through threaded comment jungles will teach themselves to use both input devices to aid reading threads, and it's hard to think about anyone that can fit into that category. (At first I thought about on-duty moderators of traffic-heavy forums, but they don't usually need that much of a context to notice violations.)

However, you made a good point about accessibility earlier: people with some sort of impairment might win from that kind of hybrid navigation mode. But would it be easier for them than, say, keyboard-only navigation? This area needs much more research.

> Maybe it's not only that Mattermost is better at marketing (are they?) but also that they are less "power user focused"?

Familiarity plays a significant role here. There's plenty of chat apps that look and behave in a similar way, so it's easier to pick up or switch to another one if you so desire.

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