Thoughts on "next generation" forum systems? (Discourse, nodeBB, etc.)

[JavaJones]

I hear you wraith. One thing I'm really missing in this - and other - SMF "classic" forums is @mentions and "likes" and that sort of thing. I feel like it helps drive engagement, especially for younger users who are more used to (and into) that kind of thing from other social media. SMF 2.1 is in beta (and has been for 9 months or more) and has some of those features, and ElkArte has them too. Many commercial forums do as well, including IPB, Xenforo, and BurningBoard. I just wish there were better implementation of such features for free systems. But maybe it's worth paying in some cases... SMF always seemed "good enough" for me, but it seems to be falling more and more behind...

- Oshyan

[wraith808]

I'm sure if it's really needed/wanted, there's some sort of plugin for it somewhere.  Necessity being the mother of invention and all.  And if it's not, we could code it up.  I guess that's why features never mattered that much to me in most of the forums.

[f0dder]

I really, really, really dislike the "endless scrolling" method. It never really seems to work with how I want to use a site, it tends to get progressively slower (not sure if it's database access or too much crud in browser memory), and it's hard to search. I haven't checked discourse in a while, so it might have gotten better - but it sucked in this regard last time I checked it

[JavaJones]

Yes, it's still "infinite scroll" and yes this is - in general - a really annoying thing to me. However I think Discourse is actually doing it right (or certainly *trying* to), and that it does have some benefits in theory. One of the devs has written a couple of articles about it that are interesting to read, partly in that they do point out *bad* infinite scroll implementations and then what they are doing to try to make a better one.
http://blog.codingho...e-end-of-pagination/

- Oshyan

[wraith808]

I really, really, really dislike the "endless scrolling" method. It never really seems to work with how I want to use a site, it tends to get progressively slower (not sure if it's database access or too much crud in browser memory), and it's hard to search. I haven't checked discourse in a while, so it might have gotten better - but it sucked in this regard last time I checked it

-f0dder (July 27, 2015, 03:19 PM)

You can do it very wrong... and though you can get pagination wrong, it's never exceptionally wrong.  There are some things that annoy me about SMF in general, and DC in particular on that regard.  But nothing that would make me go ick.