topic Re: Any plans to make this Community more like the BT TV one? in EE Community info & News

Any plans to make this Community more like the BT TV one?

Midnight_Voice — Sun, 14 Jul 2024 12:02:06 GMT

I find the UI here hateful.

Are there any plans to make it more like the BT Community?

Both are Khoros, so the underpinnings should be the same, despite its chameleon-like ability to appear very differently depending how the skinning is done.

Re: Any plans to make this Community more like the BT TV one?

DarrenDev — Sun, 14 Jul 2024 12:04:08 GMT

This one is running the newer version. What don't you like about it?

Re: Any plans to make this Community more like the BT TV one?

Midnight_Voice — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 07:59:50 GMT

@DarrenDev

A fair question that demands a fair answer. Bit busy at the moment, travelling, but I’ll work one up when I get some free time.

If this is the newer version, does that mean you are proposing to move the BT Community to this look? I do hope not…

Re: Any plans to make this Community more like the BT TV one?

DarrenDev — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 08:17:21 GMT

I've just checked, and they're actually the same version now. I much prefer this community though - much faster to reply, as it adds the input directly to the screen with the full thread (whereas the BT community takes you to a new page, with just the single comment you're replying to). It's a little annoying that I have to log in so frequently, but other than that I like it (despite not being able to get kudos anymore).

Re: Any plans to make this Community more like the BT TV one?

Midnight_Voice — Thu, 18 Jul 2024 16:37:10 GMT

@DarrenDev

One to be going on with while I align my aquatic wildfowl 😛

This might be a bug….. but which of these posts haven’t I read?

If I look at the list of unread postings, it tells me I have something to read under ‘Issue with the EE app’, and this is true, but it should be indicated in the display I have screen-shotted by that title being bold; and it isn’t.

This is one of my beefs with the EE Community UI, that I have to use the ‘unread’ list because of the above issue, but it now occurs to me this may be a bug rather than a design issue, because sometimes the emboldening does work, and sometimes, as here, it doesn’t.

I’m using Safari on my iPad Pro; maybe it works fine on my laptop, but I can’t check that until next week. iPads can be a bit of a poor relation on Communities, I find, being portrait devices that aren’t quite mobiles and aren’t quite not.

Maybe someone at EE can check this out; and if it’s a bug, they can fix it, and I can cross it off my list?

(In the meantime, a plus point for the EE Community that I don’t have to shrink my images so I can post them, like I have to on the BT Community).

Re: Any plans to make this Community more like the BT TV one?

DarrenDev — Fri, 19 Jul 2024 06:29:37 GMT

Ah yes, I've noticed that one myself - although I can't see an option to show the "unread list"? Where is that?

Regarding the bug - that's one for @NickBS

Re: Any plans to make this Community more like the BT TV one?

NickBS — Fri, 19 Jul 2024 07:58:07 GMT

Thanks both. I'll get someone to take a look at this next week - and we can confirm expected behaviour for unread/read UX.

Maybe in relation to OP vs replies. But we'll take a look and we can raise a bug ticket if needed.

Re: Any plans to make this Community more like the BT TV one?

XRaySpeX — Sat, 20 Jul 2024 00:55:28 GMT

Threads containing unread posts should be in bold in that list. They are for me!

Re: Any plans to make this Community more like the BT TV one?

Chris_B — Sat, 20 Jul 2024 06:17:21 GMT

Even on mobile unread is bold and read is not.

the only post I’ve not read is the middle one.

Re: Any plans to make this Community more like the BT TV one?

Midnight_Voice — Sat, 20 Jul 2024 10:14:52 GMT

@XRaySpeX @Chris_B @DarrenDev @NickBS

What browser(s) are you using?

It’s possible this issue only affects Safari - I haven’t managed to reproduce it on Chrome on this iPad so far.

And I have an issue on the Sony Community where formatting I try to apply - Bold, Italic, Underline - appears in the Reply as I type it, but does not appear in the Reply as then displayed in the list of postings. Though it’s still present, as if I Edit the post, it reappears in the post as I edit it. And then disappears again in the list of postings.

It’s as if there is some sort of erroneous format-suppressing bit of HTML up front. Makes me wonder if something similar might be happening here. Or might be a red herring… I can’t get any sense out of Sony on it, though; they aren’t responsive like you guys.

It never happens on the BT Community though; the boldening always works perfectly there, even in Safari.

Re: Any plans to make this Community more like the BT TV one?

Midnight_Voice — Sat, 20 Jul 2024 11:01:36 GMT

@DarrenDev

Aren't ‘Helpful’ acknowledgments the EE equivalent of Kudos?

I also find the login frequency annoying; I imagine this is a design decision, but I wonder if there is any good reason the expiry is so much shorter than on the BT Community?

I don’t know about the direct input being faster than the BT approach, but yes it is better; I was just able to look right back up the thread while replying, whereas the BT approach silos you with the one posting you are replying to.

Here’s the Unread Topics list, in the second screenshot, right at the bottom of the page shown in the first screenshot (where the boldening of unread is working at the moment!) ; the area goes entirely blank if you have read everything, with not even a title, though, so you will only see it when there is new stuff. You can press View All there, and get the display shown in the third screenshot:-

I thought I’d got the BT Community to do something similar to that third display, even though there seems to be no formal method for it, by appending /unread to a page I was looking at, but I can’t reproduce this at the moment 😢

Re: Any plans to make this Community more like the BT TV one?

DarrenDev — Sat, 20 Jul 2024 11:20:21 GMT

@Midnight_Voice you'll see my account isn't in the list under Most Solutions, or Top Helpful. My account isn't eligible.

When you log into the EE community, it's with an EE ID. That same browser window can be used to log into all other EE sites without entering credentials again, thus it expires quicker for safety.

I hadn't spotted the unread list at the bottom - it's showing a lot of threads that I have read. The main list varies a lot - sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It sometimes shows stuff as read that I know I haven't read.

I use Edge and Chrome.

Re: Any plans to make this Community more like the BT TV one?

Midnight_Voice — Sat, 20 Jul 2024 11:49:03 GMT

@DarrenDev

Ah, I see what you mean about not being eligible. I guess the Helpful I just gave you goes straight into the bit bucket 😛

The Now Community, RIP, had the same short expiry on this iPad, as the EE Community, and for much the same reason; same login for the Community and for the streaming. OTOH, that login persisted forever, unless actively deleted, on TVs and such. Cue bewildered users who had thrown away or sold TVs without wiping them, only to find a new subscription mysteriously bought in their name months later 😛

I think I’ve seen things I’ve read coming up in the Unread list in the past, but I haven’t caught it out lately. And I’d rather have a false positive there than a false negative in the main display, though getting both exactly right would be the ideal.

Unread things marked as read (no bold on the title) is the bug to be chased down. As they are always to be found in the Unread list, it seems to be a formatting error in the main display, rather than the posting being actually misclassified. As you have seen this on Edge, I guess that rules out it being just a Safari issue.

Re: Any plans to make this Community more like the BT TV one?

Midnight_Voice — Thu, 08 Aug 2024 12:52:33 GMT

I’m aware I started a hare running here, and never came back 😢

My main problem with the Community turned out to be a bug, the unreliable boldening of Unread threads in the main listing. Hopefully this will get fixed; it’s very clear, and reliable, as to what I have and haven’t read in the BT Community.

For the moment, the workaround I have successfully adopted is to work off the ‘Unread’ list, which does seem to be reliable now. And it also shows less of the original posting, so you get more on a page, closer to the density of the BT Community.

But the BT Community remains nicer to look at - better choice and use of fonts and colours, while the EE Community is pretty monochrome.

Also - and this is a problem with many Communities, not just this one - there is too much emphasis on the original posting. Good for people coming new to the thread, but not when there are sixteen pages, and you’ve read fourteen of them. You know there’s stuff you haven’t read, but there’s nothing to help you find your high water mark.

At least the BT Community tells you what the latest posting is, as well as what the first posting was; the EE Community doesn’t. But you can’t click on that last posting and have it take you there, which is a lost opportunity.

Actually, the holy grail here is something the Now Community promised, even gave us a setting for, but never implemented. It was called ‘Jump to First Unread’; which, if you think about it, is exactly what we need. The idea was for it to be a global setting, by user, to determine what happens when you click on the thread title.

Our hope was that this is a Khoros setting, with the functionality it needs already provided, so it just needs the flag for this to be added to our user profiles. But for some reason, Now gave us the flag setting, but never the functionality.

I think this is such a great option that I don’t understand why every Community out there doesn’t implement it.

Re: Any plans to make this Community more like the BT TV one?

Chris_B — Thu, 08 Aug 2024 17:34:56 GMT

@Midnight_Voice Sorry for the late reply. The image I posted was from Safari on my iPhone and I get exactly the same on my iPad.

Re: Any plans to make this Community more like the BT TV one?

Midnight_Voice — Thu, 08 Aug 2024 18:14:09 GMT

@Chris_B

No worries. I just took these iPad screenshots - the first on Safari, where you can see the top posting isn’t emboldened, but also that the topic is listed (correctly) under Unread Topics.

And the second two from Chrome, same issue, except I couldn’t get both topic and Unread display on the same page.

I don’t have a moment’s trouble with the emboldening on the BT Community.

It’s great that it works for you, but it doesn’t work for me, and it seems not for @DarrenDev either, and it ought to work for everybody.

Maybe we need to compare iPad model numbers, and iPadOS versions, and see what comes out of that? It might help with tracking down the issue. Mine’s an A1980 iPad Pro (11 inch) on iPadOS 17.5.1. I don’t have an iPhone.

Re: Any plans to make this Community more like the BT TV one?

Midnight_Voice — Thu, 08 Aug 2024 21:36:54 GMT

@Chris_B

A further observation; I did see an emboldened unread topic, followed by another unread topic that wasn’t emboldened, taking the definition that causes topics to be in the Unread Topics list, namely that they have at least one unread post.

The emboldened unread topic was one post long and I indeed hadn’t read it.

The unemboldened unread topic had several posts I had read, followed by one at the end that I had not read.

I wonder if the bug/difference is that the emboldening is used only for completely unread topics, and not for partially unread topics, as it should be?

Would that explain the difference in what you an I are seeing, and reporting?

Re: Any plans to make this Community more like the BT TV one?

XRaySpeX — Fri, 09 Aug 2024 00:51:01 GMT

You are looking at the top-level Community > Community Activity. I rarely look at that; I don't find it useful. I see both completely unread topics & partially unread topics correctly boldened all the time in individual forum lists & All Topics.

When you look a particular forum with the list of the topics within it there is also a list of Unread Topics (on R on a wide PC screen). When you click on 1 of those topics it takes you to its 1st unread post.

Does the boldening or not work out correct for you when you view All Topics ?

Re: Any plans to make this Community more like the BT TV one?

Midnight_Voice — Fri, 09 Aug 2024 06:40:40 GMT

@XRaySpeX

Thanks for that. But I’m confused 😢

I’ve never used All Chat, and I have no idea how to access it for myself. I can follow your link to it fine, but I can’t find

https://community.ee.co.uk/t5/TV/New-EE-TV-Box-Pro-finding-no-channels-in-Internet-Mode/td-p/1399632

in it at all, at least not where I’d expect it to be, above

https://community.ee.co.uk/t5/TV/How-much-is-EE-TV/td-p/1418626

and these are the two threads that I have at the moment in Unread Topics in

EE Community >Home Services >TV

which is mostly where I am following things. Is that one of the individual forum lists of which you speak? In which case, though it works for you, it doesn’t work for me.

But though I can see both emboldened and unemboldened threads in All Chat, I can’t see the one there that is problematic in the TV list, the only one, at the moment, that is in the TV list unemboldened but in the Unread list.

Finally, clicking on an item in Unread Topics takes me to the first posting in the thread, not to the first unread, when these are different, as they very often are.

As above, all this is on my iPad Pro, which is where I choose to handle this stuff. It may be different on a PC (I have one, so I will take a look) but it shouldn’t be this different.

Re: Any plans to make this Community more like the BT TV one?

Midnight_Voice — Fri, 09 Aug 2024 09:27:51 GMT

@XRaySpeX

Firefox, Windows 10, exact same issue as on the iPad:-

The title of the topic with the unread post is not boldened.

And yes, genuinely (and completely) unread topics are emboldened, though there are none in these screenshots.