Is there any way to collapse comments and their children in the interface? Seems like a fairly basic feature but I can’t find it.

  • klin@kbin.social
    1·
    2 years ago

    SOOOOOO after finally setting up my kbin dev environment I went ahead and wrote some code to add support for EXACTLY this on the official kbin codebase!

    GIF of it in action:
    demo

    I have a PR up for it already here: https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core/pulls/167

    Now just need @ernest 's approval and once it’s merged you’ll be able to do this on kbin without any modifications!!!

    edit: clicking on a comment now also hides its content (other than the username), making it even more clear which threads are collapsed! (similar to apollo) – updated the demo gif

    • psyspoop@kbin.social
      0·
      2 years ago

      Nice! Would it be possible to use a little +/- icon somewhere on each comment instead of having it be clicking anywhere on the comment? I could see myself very regularly accidentally collapsing stuff when I don’t mean to.

      • klin@kbin.social
        1·
        2 years ago

        I love the huge touch target for mobile friendliness, and I’ve done some work to make sure accidental collapses don’t happen (if you mean to select text it won’t collapse, if you click on a link or a button it won’t collapse either!)

        is there a common situation where you’d accidentally collapse stuff when you dont mean to?

        • namastex@kbin.social
          0·
          2 years ago

          I like how RIF (Reddit Is Fun) does it. If you click on a comment (or post on your front page), it reformats the comment box so that it opens up additional options. One of them happens to be collapse among other basic commands like reply, report, next parent comment, previous parent comment and stuff like that. It makes the comment and front page sections a little bit more compact and easy to read quickly without options cluttering the interface. The voting options are the only options that stick out without clicking on a comment so you can easily upvote/downvote and move on.

          • klin@kbin.social
            0·
            2 years ago

            interesting, sounds closer to a complete redesign on how we see and interact with the comment – i mostly use apollo so i kinda took the design language there but def see what you’re saying!

            limiting my change to specifically comment thread collapsing since that sounds like a bigger overhaul!

            • zalack@kbin.social
              1·
              2 years ago

              I like you’re approach. It’s exactly the way Relay handles it.

              That being said… Maybe you need different UX for mobile vs Web?

        • sgtlighttree@kbin.social
          0·
          2 years ago

          Like @psyspoop said, touchpads can be prone to accidental collapses. Maybe setting the touch target to be on the “header” of the comment (the whitespace between the username and the upvote/downvote buttons) could be a good compromise?

          • klin@kbin.social
            0·
            2 years ago

            TBH that’s not too hard to do, but it goes back to the whole mobile friendliness :(

            IMO i think the upside of mobile friendliness outweigh the times people accidentally tap on touchpad, and i personally think just having the header being a touch target is a little too small for mobile users… so i prefer the whole comment being a target

            obviously if folks disagree heavily i could probably adjust but i’m curious what @ernest thinks

            • disposabletentacle@kbin.social
              1·
              2 years ago

              What if there was an option somewhere to switch between the two? Mobile users could keep the full comment collapsing, and web users could switch to header-only collapsing.