Add categories and default chat channel in sidebar
Coming from Slack, the left-hand sidebar seems very under-used and makes Talkyard hard to navigate in comparison. I think two changes would really help:
- List categories in sidebar. This would make it easy to see what categories there are and also make it easy to jump between categories (like channels in Slack). Possibly it would need the option to only show selected categories if there are very many.
- If chat channels are enabled, always initiate with a "general" chat channel that everyone is a member of by default (perhaps the name of this channel could be customised - on this forum you might call it "support"). Having None under chat channels in the sidebar by default is really confusing for newcomers, as it looks like there are no chat channels even when there are! A drop-down of available channels to join would also be great.
KajMagnus @KajMagnus2020-09-26 08:49:01.835Z2020-09-26 10:45:23.488ZThanks for these ideas :- ). 1) Listing categories — I've been thinking about having a 2nd sidebar, on laptops & wide screens, with categories ( & tags maybe).
Hmm, including categories in the leftmost sidebar with topics — then I'd think the different sidebar sections would have to be collabsible. Because if there're many recently viewed topics, & chats, & direct messages — & categories too, then that'd be lots of rows.
Seems like a good idea this too :- ) For mobile phones & tablets and smaller-screen laptops: Collabsible sidebar sub sections. And wider screens: An extra left hand sidebar.only show selected categories
Sounds like a good idea. Maybe there could be an half-collapsed state, for each sidebar section — where one's own selected categories appear, in the categories sidebar section. And one's own most recently active direct messages, in the direct messages sidebar section, and so on. Then maybe everythign could fit, also on a tablet & small-laptop display.
2) General chat channel — This works already (but is undocumented o. O):
if one pins a chat channel globally, then it'll appear in the sidebar, and new members will auto-join it.
However I wanted to change how this is implemented in the database — so there's 1 database row per member who left the channel (since joining is the default). And I removed those channels temporarily, here at Ty .io.- Progresswith doing this idea
