| > 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. |