What do you mean by “makes the URL bar useless”? What’s the use you’re hoping would still be there?
The URL is externalized mental context on which article I’m currently viewing, and it’s also common for me to copy the link out to use elsewhere. Previously it would stay the URL of the front page—I think that’s been changed since I wrote that, though.
The point of the modals is they don’t lose your place in the feed in a way that’s hard technically to do with proper navigation, though it’s possible we should just figure out how to do that.
Yeah, though as a desktop browser user, I already have a well-practiced way of doing that, which is to open stuff in new tabs if I want to keep my place. I would imagine doing a pre-link-following replacement of the history state to include an anchor that restores my position on Back would allow true top-level navigation here? Or, stashing the “read up to X so far” state somewhere seems to be a common thing. (You’ve presumably thought of all that already.)
All comment threads are what I call a “linear-slice” (parent-child-child-child) with no branching.
Yeah, I figured it out eventually. It does seem tricky to get a good presentational design here; I don’t know of a great way to convey that difference in context, and I do feel like it’s awkward to remember the distinction or have to flip between the formats mentally when navigating around. Maybe if the visual frames were more distinct from the kind used in the nested-comments interface it’d be easier to remember that the chain isn’t siblings?
The URL is externalized mental context on which article I’m currently viewing, and it’s also common for me to copy the link out to use elsewhere. Previously it would stay the URL of the front page—I think that’s been changed since I wrote that, though.
Yeah, though as a desktop browser user, I already have a well-practiced way of doing that, which is to open stuff in new tabs if I want to keep my place. I would imagine doing a pre-link-following replacement of the history state to include an anchor that restores my position on Back would allow true top-level navigation here? Or, stashing the “read up to X so far” state somewhere seems to be a common thing. (You’ve presumably thought of all that already.)
Yeah, I figured it out eventually. It does seem tricky to get a good presentational design here; I don’t know of a great way to convey that difference in context, and I do feel like it’s awkward to remember the distinction or have to flip between the formats mentally when navigating around. Maybe if the visual frames were more distinct from the kind used in the nested-comments interface it’d be easier to remember that the chain isn’t siblings?
Thanks for continuing to try to improve the site!