@julian said in Experimentation Roundup: At-a-Glance Navigator:

@phenomlab said in Experimentation Roundup: At-a-Glance Navigator:

Overall, the navigator here looks the same as the scrubber bar used in Flarum and Discourse

You are completely correct. Flarum's design overall is really on-point, and their navigator was one of the main reasons why ours looks the way it does.

As the dev's know I flagged some of these navigator issues far in advance of the roll out (primarily the positional ones), and this was to be avoided, now that it's settled on the same as all the rest, is IMHO simply not good enough for NodeBB, especially when there was decent insight in advance of this resting position, which is 'we're at the out of idea or care/time to fix it, 'tis a frustrating thing to see happen, but it's still early days in the life of NodeBB V3 so we can be opstimsitc and there are simple solution to get the ball moving.

The primary issue is not the function and how well the navigator works, but that the navigator as is, has made a total bollox of the harmony symmetry, it's offset the text area, seriously, does it not break one face looking at it?

Now as a simple solution if the dev's are up for the challenge, and and the people think is useful, how about allow a user to hide the navigator?

I suggested in 2022 the timeline-post-navigator (DESKTOP) be developed totally on it's on timeline as a plugin or stand alone component or whatever works in dev world, ('cause I'm not a coder), but as cited, and also important to note here, none of the other platforms have managed to get it right either or understand the true potential of it as a system.

Lately Discourse V3 has done a lot to address the historical issues with their timeline navigator and for once it's actually not the horror it was before, this is primarily positionally speaking.

The reason this is IMHO actually much worse in a Harmony is because of the column layout is ver demanding and dominating, and the right column, if that column wasn't there, the navigator would naturally take up that space and balance with the left column, in a single column layout, leaving the post content area easily and comfortably centred.

What we have is a 3rd visual column (being teh navigator) offset from the right column jammed up again the post content area and a major waste of space. This is the worst outcome.

Added to that the thing jumps up and down, it's a very distracting active element in how it's currently implemented, positionally.

Something has to be done, if at all minimally to rectify some order and a balance and get admins/user options out of the box that are reasonable.

Another point is to put the navigator-timeline back into the right column. It should be in the side bar at least, again this was flagged in 2022 conceptually as the final position. Right column in the 2 column Harmony theme design.

So for now with what I seem would present least work to the quickest move in addressing issues, is to allow a user hide the thing, either as a setting in user prefers or a minimise on-screen options, the purpose of this it would reset the post content are to centre.

In conclusion, the navigator breaks my metaphorical face.

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