Hello there,
I have one minor suggestion that would probably help with a lot of things, mainly comment organization, as the subject line reads. On large forum topics, including the iOS 27 beta thread, because there are over 70 comments now, it is very hard to get to the newest comment. You have to scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page, usually navigating by heading, use the pagination link to go to the last page, and finally view the last new comment.
I would like to see an option where you can sort them by newest-to-oldest. That way the thread can be easier to follow. It could maybe be that you could, by default, view from oldest-to-newest, but there could be an option to sort them by newest-to-oldest.
Thank you for reading, and have a wonderful day.
Comments
Try "last update or comment"
If you arrow down a few times under each forum topic on the main page, you will see a line like:
0 comments. Last update or comment 4 minutes 48 seconds ago
The "last updater comment" is a link that will bring you to the first message in that thread that you didn't already read previously. This skips over all of the posts that you might have read so that you don't have to go hunting through each page in order to catch up to where you left off.
Maybe that isn't quite what you were looking for, but it might help.
--Pete
Thanks @Seamus
Hi Seamus,
First, thank you as always for the feedback and suggestion.
In an ideal world, the link displaying the number of new comments (mentioned by Peter above) should always take focus right to that part of the page. This works reliably on Windows, but it does not work as well on Apple platforms. I will ask our developer to look into this to see if there is anything that can be done on our end to make VoiceOver focus correctly when those links are clicked.
Regarding sorting comments from newest to oldest, one really obvious concern is that this could make threads hard to follow if one is browsing comments in essentially reverse order. I am definitely not saying 'no' to this, but I am also not convinced that this is the best solution to the problem of trying to quickly navigate to unread comments in a thread. I would be curious what others think and we can definitely work on a solution both to the underlying user experience issue, and additional comment sorting options if that has enough community support.
Comments sorting
I am happy with the current arrangement. For as long as you are logged on to Applevis, once you leave the thread, when you come back you will have an option to land to the new comment.
Forum comments.
Yes. When logged in, you can get to the comments you haven't read. For example, it says something like 21 comments, and a link seven new. I really like this format too because you don't have to go through all the ones you've already read.
Comment format
Personally, I like things as they are. Admittedly, the link to jump to the newest comment within a thread could use a little tweaking, but otherwise I like things how they are. 😊
I vote for the sort by newest
It could make things easier a bit even when we are not logged int.