What happened with the "users viewing a topic" feature?

[hek]

In 0.9.3 and above?

There also was a small keyboard popping up when someone was answering...

[pichalite]

@hek users browsing a topic feature was removed due to performance issues.

[psychobunny]

We were looking into making this an optional plugin... if anybody wants it sooner than later, it might be pretty easy to build by throwing all the code that was removed into a plugin. Might have to add a couple new hooks at worst

Some forums had literally thousands of people in a single thread, so everytime somebody joined or left you could imagine the amount of data that had to be transferred in real time to everybody else

[hek]

Understandable.

Could be simplified to a "number" of viewers + the typing thing (which is good!) should render much less websocket/redis traffic.

[frissdiegurke]

I think a "number of viewers" would also be traffic-intensive since it has to be updated the same amount of times to the same amount of people, instead of user-ids you send a number. I still think indicating the people who are currently responding would be a good thing so you know if an issue is going to be answered by someone else.

[psychobunny]

I personally liked the keyboard thing, but before I add it back I'd like to rethink the design. The older version had the icons up top, but if you were in the middle/bottom of the thread you wouldn't know anyway. Once you scroll down below OP it basically became useless

@frissdiegurke is right about the load still being an issue wrt to only showing a number

It's really not a big deal on smaller forums such as this. I'd love to be able to get it back as a toggle-able option and/or plugin

[hek]

Maybe the composer popover would be the right place for the "someone-else-is-writing-an-answer" icon?

That is the situation (at least I) want to know about it.

And skip the whos-watching-topic thing. It's a bit creepy anyway.

[Nicolas]

@psychobunny said:

The older version had the icons up top, but if you were in the middle/bottom of the thread you wouldn't know anyway. Once you scroll down below OP it basically became useless

It could be a float avatar (like we have now for active chats) but with keyboard icon on it.

[julian]

@hek said:

And skip the whos-watching-topic thing. It's a bit creepy anyway.

It was one of my ideas to demonstrate the "real-time" aspect of the forum. I definitely want to bring it back, but in a more performant manner.

I think it goes one step further in communicating the "community" feel of your forum. Instead of individuals posting messages, it's a conversation between people... that sort of thing.

[MarximusMG]

@julian FWIW, what you just described is what drew me to NodeBB and clinched the decision to use it over the alternatives.

[whitts]

I would also like something like this for other reasons. We have a sub category where users post questions and we have certain people assigned to receive emails when new topics are posted - they are supposed to then go and reply to the question and it would be nice to be able inform them somehow that someone else (that was emailed) is already in the process of replying.

[AnOdeToBB]

Is this still active? Looking for this feature.

[julian]

@anodetobb Yes! It is available as a separate plugin here

https://github.com/barisusakli/nodebb-plugin-browsing-users

Thanks for @baris for making this happen.

[AnOdeToBB]

@julian said in What happened with the "users viewing a topic" feature?:

@anodetobb Yes! It is available as a separate plugin here

https://github.com/barisusakli/nodebb-plugin-browsing-users

Thanks for @baris for making this happen.

Great, thanks!!

Thanks @baris

[psychobunny]

.. and nicely enough, the new (well new-ish enough) sticky topic header made for a great place to put the browsing user avatars.

guess who built that also @baris

[Esha]

@julian how does this plugin work?