Fitt’s law says that the time needed to acquire a target is a function of the distance to the target, and the size of the target. Using these principles and looking at how users browse forums, we could revisit the forum view of discussion boards.
Here’s the thing. When I return to a forum and decide to read a topic which I had read earlier, very rarely will I want to re-read posts which I have already read. About 99% of the time, I just want to go to the first unread posts. I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in doing this.
As an example, I took a screenshot of a topic on a typical forum view.
In the following screenshot, I have highlighted the “hit area” from which you can access the first page of the topic.
And to go straight to the last post:
Even though the vast majority of time people simply want to go to the first unread post, the hit area is much smaller. On this forum it’s a 12×12 hit area and on phpBB it’s 18×9. My suggestion would be to change the default action of clicking on the topic name to go to the first unread post. It’s still possible to access the first page by clicking on the “1″.
Any thoughts?
Neowin does this on its most recent topics list on the homepage, it goes to the last post made, but, i agree, it would be nice if it was a defualt action of most forums.
I think you’re absolutely right, however it’s hard to imagine the big names in the BB world changeing something which has been the norm behaviour for so many years.
It would probably require some trials and tests to see how people react. For example will people understand the behaviour of it going to the last post? Minor things such as usability improvements can make good software great. At the very least, the icon should be made bigger like phpBB’s “go to first unread post” icon.
It certainly couldn’t hurt.
What might be better though failing the new use of the topic link, is to make the topic/forum icon (They tend to be pretty large.) act as a link to the last post.
If not all the time at least when there are new unread posts. I mean that’s what the icon is there to tell you anyway. So why not take you to those posts? For some reason a few boards currently use those icons, in the case of forums, to mark the forum read. Which while usefull perhaps isn’t as logical to me.
You know the more i think on it the original idea of this isn’t quite right. It just doesn’t make sense by wider norms.
For me personally it would be perfect, because most boards I visit I read regularly and have the same reasons as for wanting this behaviour as yourself.
Conversely with any document I’ve never read, not just in message boards, but all formats. If I click on a title I expect to start at the beginning and so have the whole document to peruse in order, not just the last fragment.
So perhaps it should be a dynamic link, if the board thinks you’ve read the topic before it takes you to the last post or last unread post. Otherwise it behaves as is the current norm.
Alternatively it could be a user profile option. Since this sort of feature is more of use to regulars who are likely to be members in any case.
Yep, whether users expect it to take them to the first unread post is the one drawback of this method I can think of. I don’t think it would be too hard to adapt though and it does make sense – if you’ve never read the document before then the first unread post is the first post. Making it an option is another possibility although I think that one thing Firefox taught us is to make decisions for the user. Most users want to benefit from enhancements but they won’t go through a list of hundred of options first.
” If you’ve never read the document before then the first unread post is the first post.”
Good point. Then that in my opinion should be the function of the topic title link.