I find this forum useful, informative and even entertaining at times. I also thank the adminstrator(s) for enabling the dark mode feature (must less eye strain). My question is whether the forum software would allow fly out descriptions of the individual post titles (2nd example below). I spend a lot of time opening a post, reading a few lines and then closing. It would be very helpful if I could mouse over the post title, read a few lines and make a decision to fully open. I do notice that if I mouse over a category on this forum, a fly out description appears. Thanks for your consideration.
An example of the fly out post title from another forum. The fly out persists until the cursor leaves the title.
This is the forum where the developers of the forum software post questions:
It naturally is based on their own software, and it’s a good place to check to see if a given feature is possible. If it is, it’s likely to be turned on in their forum. The one you’re asking about seems not to be active.
While checking that I noticed that the ‘hamburger’ menu they have gives direct access to the Dark mode setting, you can change the setting from whatever page you are on at the time, no need to go into your preferences. @jody, would that be hard to add?
For your request, you could register with Discourse and post the suggestion about preview text could be implemented. One thing that would be neat would be to point to the avatars in the list for that topic, and get preview text for what that person had last posted. Then you could see what the original topic was about, and quickly see if someone has already posted a useful answer.
I don’t think this is feasible. (I mean it could be done, but the amount of bandwidth required would be excessive if the synopsis had to be downloaded along with the lists. If the synopsis only downloaded upon hover there might be an annoying delay.)
I would suggest changing your landing page to the Categories page, and then filter by category. Ie enter a category that you find interesting or that applies to what you are working on that day. (Prevent overload.)
You can also mute entire categories that do not interest you. (I myself have muted over 40 categories, as there is just toot much input here for my brain. I’ve pared it down to only 16 categories that interest me.)
The other thing that can help is the search feature (mag glass at top right.) Searching from the top searches all categories. Enter a certain category and a search only searches it and subcategories. And so on … So basically you use categories to do filtered searches.
Thanks @colin, but not sure I want to explore the Discourse tangent. Becoming Discourse literate would be another time sink that takes away from my primary interest, SU.
Thanks @DanRathbun, for the suggestion on “Categories”. But, I would point out there are other forums (even larger communities) that offer this feature, so I would wonder how they manage the “bandwidth” issue.
And, if I am in the minority who see this feature as a real time saver, then I will accept what is presently offered as a real blessing.
