Skip to content
New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Add a "don't scroll with load new" option #976

Open
MysticalOS opened this issue Jul 5, 2023 · 103 comments
Open

Add a "don't scroll with load new" option #976

MysticalOS opened this issue Jul 5, 2023 · 103 comments
Labels
feature-request A request for a new feature x:discussing We've seen the request and we're talking about it!

Comments

@MysticalOS
Copy link

MysticalOS commented Jul 5, 2023

I like to pick up where i left off if I left app for a few hours. What I don't like is that the load new just auto scrolls to top, which then leaves me having to read in reverse until I "catch up" to where I left off.

Ideal would be that there is an option to load new that respects my current position but still loads new posts so I can continue reading in order and "catch up" on feed. I'm not only user like this that likes to catch up on what I missed, so we definitely need this option.

EDIT:
Latest dev response comment on issue
#976 (comment)

@MysticalOS MysticalOS added the feature-request A request for a new feature label Jul 5, 2023
@pfrazee
Copy link
Collaborator

pfrazee commented Jul 17, 2023

Can you share a little about how you use the app?

My guess is that what you do is scroll down some amount and then work your way up, and what you'd like is for the "Load More" to just add a few more to the top and you can keep working your way up?

We can look into something like that but our UI components sometimes struggle intensely with adding elements to the top while maintaining scroll position (it is the source of some bad bugs).

@pfrazee pfrazee added the x:discussing We've seen the request and we're talking about it! label Jul 17, 2023
@MysticalOS
Copy link
Author

yeah idea would be to load to top without scrolling up, similar to how tweetbot worked in it's glory before someone put an end to that. no idea how they did it though, but when it'd load new, it maintained current scroll position, so you could continue scrolling up chronological where you left off instead of snapping to top.

@pfrazee
Copy link
Collaborator

pfrazee commented Jul 17, 2023

To be clear we've got a pretty full work queue so this may not get prioritized, but I am curious:

Would there be some other UI mode that would be even better for this? Sometime like a "catch up" mode where it goes chronological (instead of reverse chron) starting from a previous date? (Not even sure this is possible without some protocol updates because we often assume reverse chron, but I'm just curious.)

@MysticalOS
Copy link
Author

MysticalOS commented Jul 17, 2023

Yeah anything that really is conducive of just reading things in order. It just feels bad to snap to top, then kinda read things backwards in between where you were and top. you end up reading things out of context sometimes. Like imagine people are talking about an event, you kinda ruin the hype reading it backwards.

And absolutely there are prob more important tasks atm :)

@pfrazee
Copy link
Collaborator

pfrazee commented Jul 17, 2023

Ohhhh I see what you mean. That makes more sense than I was originally thinking. Okay I'll think about this.

Thanks for explaining!

@chronomac
Copy link

I was going to post about this very thing and then found this one. I just wanted to follow up and see if there was any update. To add some more context: the current Twitter app works this way too, not just Tweetbot (RIP). When I open the app, I'd like my feed to let me pick up where I left off.

@Cowthulu
Copy link

Cowthulu commented Sep 3, 2023

I am very new to Bluesky, but the current behavior seems very counterintuitive to me as well. I am used to coming back to where I was in the feed, and having to search for the last post I read or arbitrarily scrolling down (or reading backwards in time) seems very odd. I guess I don’t understand how the UI is supposed to be used?

@ian-pop
Copy link

ian-pop commented Sep 22, 2023

I was searching for this so wanted to add my support.
I want to pick up from where I was last reading. Starting at the top isn't a very good experience

@Pikuboy
Copy link

Pikuboy commented Sep 27, 2023

I would love that functionality too.

@Tim-Pohlmann
Copy link

I think the different points of view are based on whether you are primarily using the "following" or an algorithm based feed.
For an algorithm based feed, it makes sense to scroll from the top. You want to just scroll for a while and see the newest posts.
For the "following" feed, the goal is to catch up with the people you follow. You want to see all posts and stop when you have reached when you all caught up. Here it makes sense to go chronologically.

@xquewx
Copy link

xquewx commented Oct 3, 2023

+1 for that functionality

@Cowthulu
Copy link

Cowthulu commented Oct 3, 2023 via email

@pfrazee
Copy link
Collaborator

pfrazee commented Oct 4, 2023

Yeah we'd probably just do this on following. There are no conceptual blockers to this; it just takes some dev work we need to have time for

@Cowthulu
Copy link

Cowthulu commented Oct 4, 2023 via email

@jspencersharpe
Copy link

Came here to say this exact thing 🙌. This would change the game for me.

@Oestberg
Copy link

Oestberg commented Oct 9, 2023

For me this feature is #1 on my wishlist to be added. Looking forward for it to be added.

@MScoutsDCI
Copy link

Adding another voice here. This seems like a glaring omission and is the reason I also never use threads (their behavior is the same).

Can’t wait to have this functionality added.

@witszymanski
Copy link

Another voice here. I was using Flamingo for Twitter and when I was opening the app after a while I was at the last read Twit, and I had a counter of unread Twits, and I was just chronologically scrolling up.

The same functionality (without the counter) is in Mastodon app.

@Enzo90910
Copy link

Same here. I also think this should be the default for the « Following » tab.

@R-Sommer
Copy link

Adding another voice here. Or let me be clear, without such functionality I'll never use this app on a regular base.

@witszymanski
Copy link

This is exactly the reason, why I am not using the app. The countless scrolling down to the previous content is so tiring.

@seboslaw
Copy link

seboslaw commented Jan 30, 2024

I've started implementing this functionality in my app "Skeets", which is available for iOS / iPad OS (sorry, no Android yet) here: https://bsky.app/profile/skeetsapp.com

At this point it works if the newly loaded number of posts is not larger than 50, but I'm currently implementing a new version which will just prepend the newly loaded posts and then give you an option to "fill the gap" between brand new posts and older posts successively.

So maybe Bluesky could do something along that?

Simulator Screenshot - iPhone 15 Pro - 2024-01-03 at 01 37 54 copy

@Cowthulu
Copy link

Cowthulu commented Feb 1, 2024 via email

@banjaloupe
Copy link

Adding my voice as well to request this feature! It makes me use Bluesky much less than I would otherwise, and is preventing me from fully switching over. I'm very interested in third party Android apps that have this functionality as well.

@witszymanski
Copy link

witszymanski commented Feb 2, 2024 via email

@pukku
Copy link

pukku commented Feb 12, 2024

I would very much like this as well!

@cjshrader
Copy link

Also chiming in for this. It feels like most social media sites aren't really catered for the "not algorithmic, only the people I follow" users. I want to see everything they post and reskeet and that's it.

@DougAK
Copy link

DougAK commented Apr 26, 2024

To be clear we've got a pretty full work queue so this may not get prioritized, but I am curious:

Would there be some other UI mode that would be even better for this? Sometime like a "catch up" mode where it goes chronological (instead of reverse chron) starting from a previous date? (Not even sure this is possible without some protocol updates because we often assume reverse chron, but I'm just curious.)

The ideal would be a chronological feed reading from the top down, loading new posts at the bottom instead of at the top. The app currently tries to put replies below the post that it’s replying to, but when a single poster tries to thread three or more posts, the result is a disaster of repetition. I realize that it would be very unconventional at this point in the evolution of the Web to load new content at the bottom instead of at the top, but OMG it would just make so much more sense. But anyway just letting me pick up where I left off would be great even if you can’t do it in the way I think would be ideal.

So I agree with the large number of people on this thread. I respectfully disagree with the one who said there are more important issues. 😉

@MysticalOS
Copy link
Author

Unless someone can explain how to use Bluesky currently, this is not a "much-desired feature" but a "critical bug". I think it is important to point out the difference.

I sympathise with your frustration, but given that Bluesky has been open to many people for more than 18 months and open to everyone since January and this feature hasn't yet been implemented, I think it's unlikely that the devs agree with you that this as a "critical bug".

devs already stated their stance here #976 (comment)
basically at this point they've asked for no further feedback. they recognize the want and just have no ETA

@garvinhicking
Copy link

IMO to properly prioritize this and to see the actual demand (now that bluesky has a huge influx from people moving away from other platforms) it is still valid and good for people to raise their voice here. +1'ing the original comment doesn't really draw attention from maintainers as there is no active "look here, people want this" indicator.

If enough people see this as critical, it will be treated as critical.
(Source: me. ;)

@aflugge
Copy link

aflugge commented Nov 15, 2024

Unless someone can explain how to use Bluesky currently, this is not a "much-desired feature" but a "critical bug". I think it is important to point out the difference.

I sympathise with your frustration, but given that Bluesky has been open to many people for more than 18 months and open to everyone since January and this feature hasn't yet been implemented, I think it's unlikely that the devs agree with you that this as a "critical bug".

I think that is what makes it so frustrating. Clearly some people are using Bluesky and I just don't understand how. Makes me feeling stupid. It feels like I must be missing something obvious.

@ruddenca
Copy link

+1

@Richard-A-Harris
Copy link

I'd suggest updating the tags on the issue to reflect what state it's actually in. The useful discussion from us unwilling/unable to work on the project seems to be long over.

If it has been decided to be worked on, as the most recent developer comment suggests; it might tamp down the comments if people can see it's been agreed without needing to read through all the posts (chronologically 😉).

@surfdude29
Copy link
Contributor

Unless someone can explain how to use Bluesky currently, this is not a "much-desired feature" but a "critical bug". I think it is important to point out the difference.

I sympathise with your frustration, but given that Bluesky has been open to many people for more than 18 months and open to everyone since January and this feature hasn't yet been implemented, I think it's unlikely that the devs agree with you that this as a "critical bug".

I think that is what makes it so frustrating. Clearly some people are using Bluesky and I just don't understand how. Makes me feeling stupid. It feels like I must be missing something obvious.

You certainly shouldn't feel stupid, it's just that people use social media in different ways. I think @plwhite's comment explains it well.

@surfdude29
Copy link
Contributor

If it has been decided to be worked on, as the most recent developer comment suggests; it might tamp down the comments if people can see it's been agreed without needing to read through all the posts (chronologically 😉).

Maybe @MysticalOS would consider editing the first post to link to @/gaearon's comment, and perhaps quoting from it too?

@danguyf
Copy link

danguyf commented Nov 15, 2024

Unless someone can explain how to use Bluesky currently, this is not a "much-desired feature" but a "critical bug". I think it is important to point out the difference.

I sympathise with your frustration, but given that Bluesky has been open to many people for more than 18 months and open to everyone since January and this feature hasn't yet been implemented, I think it's unlikely that the devs agree with you that this as a "critical bug".

I think that is what makes it so frustrating. Clearly some people are using Bluesky and I just don't understand how. Makes me feeling stupid. It feels like I must be missing something obvious.

There are too many people who don't know any better, who have been trained by Facebook and Instagram and others not to expect a sensible, chronological feed. Those other platforms show them whatever they decide to show them with no concern for chronology or whether the users miss important updates from the people they follow. Bluesky must do better, must be better!

It's great the Bluesky isn't injecting ads in my feed or deciding what I see, isn't invisibly weighting the posts of the people I follow behind the scenes to decide whether I get to see those posts -- love it. Now please stop throwing me to the most recent post and forcing me to scroll down, down, down trying to remember where I left off, trying not to get spoiled, so that I can resume chronologically.

@aflugge
Copy link

aflugge commented Nov 15, 2024

You certainly shouldn't feel stupid, it's just that people use social media in different ways. I think @plwhite's comment explains it well.

Yes, of course there are to different ways of uses. For one there is the discover feed, for the other there is the following feed. Just that the following feed doesn't work. In some way it would be better to remove the following feed to not give the impression that the use case is supported if it isn't. What I do not understand is how you are supposed to use the following feed as it is today.

@danguyf
Copy link

danguyf commented Nov 15, 2024

Just that the following feed doesn't work. In some way it would be better to remove the following feed to not give the impression that the use case is supported if it isn't. What I do not understand is how you are supposed to use the following feed as it is today.

Precisely! The "Following" feed is not, IMHO, usable for following the people that I follow if on load it places me at the most recent post; that's not following, that's leading. I expect a Discover feed to be newest-first but if I've curated a list of people that I'm following it's because I want to follow them -- I want to see everything they post in a chronological context.

The current feed is "A Feed of People I'm Following in Reverse Chronological Order", whereas I expected it to be "A Feed for Following".

@surfdude29
Copy link
Contributor

Precisely! The "Following" feed is not, IMHO, usable for following the people that I follow if on load it places me at the most recent post; that's not following, that's leading. I expect a Discover feed to be newest-first but if I've curated a list of people that I'm following it's because I want to follow them -- I want to see everything they post in a chronological context.

The current feed is "A Feed of People I'm Following in Reverse Chronological Order", whereas I expected it to be "A Feed for Following".

I'm rather puzzled by this comment, are you implying that the Following feed shouldn't be in reverse chronological order?

@danguyf
Copy link

danguyf commented Nov 15, 2024

I'm rather puzzled by this comment, are you implying that the Following feed shouldn't be in reverse chronological order?

Effectively, yes. It should enable the user to start from the last post that they read and then scroll forward chronologically until they reach the newest post.

Whether that means scrolling up or down is left as a decision for the UI/UX SMEs. As others have commented, ideally refreshing would load the new posts above the current one and then allow you to scroll up OR choose to tap the top to jump to the top for those deranged users who prefer the current behavior.

@surfdude29
Copy link
Contributor

As others have commented, ideally refreshing would load the new posts above the current one and then allow you to scroll up

Yes, that's what this issue is about and posts would be displayed in reverse chronological order.

Chronological order = Oldest post is at the top of the feed, newest post is at the bottom
Reverse chronological order = Newest post is at the top of the feed, oldest post is at the bottom

@danguyf
Copy link

danguyf commented Nov 15, 2024

Chronological order = Oldest post is at the top of the feed, newest post is at the bottom Reverse chronological order = Newest post is at the top of the feed, oldest post is at the bottom

Chronological order = oldest posts first
Reverse chronological order = newest posts first

Whether things are read top to bottom, left to right, or sideways is a UI matter with no bearing on the definitions of the terms.

@madalienist
Copy link

The UI is almost there, the button to show there are new posts appears, but they don’t auto load so you can’t scroll up. To get them to load you have to press the arrow, or pull to refresh, which then scrolls you to the top of the latest post. Rather than allowing you to just naturally scroll up from where you left off.

image

This is a nice addition. But sometimes the app refreshes for me. Also when you manually load it still takes you to the top of the feed. I then have to scroll back to where I left off.

@InsrtClvrNm
Copy link

I was so excited to start using Bluesky as their users are finally getting to a place where there are people I want to follow.

It's crazy to me that there are as many users as there are that don't have a problem with this feature. This is a pretty basic thing, and they haven't figured out how to prioritize it for a year?!

This is an app killer for me. If I have to scroll back to find where I left off in order to catch up, I am not using this app.

+1 for this feature.

@metskem
Copy link

metskem commented Nov 23, 2024

I even considered it a bug when it throws you to the top of the Following feed instead of continu reading where you left off.
Hopefully it can be prioritised and fixed soon.
Thanks for all your effort!

@Enzo90910
Copy link

Enzo90910 commented Nov 24, 2024 via email

@aflugge
Copy link

aflugge commented Nov 24, 2024

I don’t have a way to replace Twitter until this feature is actually implemented.

Mastodon works. So you could move there in the mean time.

@digger16309
Copy link

I would take ads in my feed like X or crashing servers from Twitter in years past for this "feature". This is really an absurd setting to de-prioritize for almost 2 years . WTH? This app is going to be abandoned just like Threads was. It's completely unusable to me as a sports news / games following application if I have to scroll down until I find where I last was in a feed. Two of the sportswriters I follow already ditched it and are now posting on X and it's obvious why that was. I saw where the Skeets developer says his app has this feature implemented but I don't see it.

@AlFeersum
Copy link

Seems to be a lot of people upvoting the initial request - but July 2023? Surely this isn't a major 'fix'.

@surfdude29
Copy link
Contributor

For new would-be commenters:

Please see the latest status update on this feature from @/gaearon, one of the Bluesky devs, in this comment:

While unlikely to deter further +1 comments, I just wanted to note that the feature is obviously needed — we’d like “soft” pagination forwards where the posts are first fetched and then if you want to you can scroll to the top with another tap — but you can also catch up manually from the place you left off. There are some questions about how exactly it would be implemented, and how it would work for custom feeds, but at least for Following the desired behavior seems relatively clear. I think we’d want to get to implementing some version of this (even if limited) in the next few months but can’t guarantee it.

If you want to express support for this, please just use the “+1” reaction on the existing posts. It is not necessary to add many similar comments since they’re notifying everyone else in the thread. The feature is not implemented yet because we have a huge backlog of things that need to be implemented, not because we think it’s unimportant. We’ll get there.

(emphasis added)

@bspaulding1
Copy link

Very psyched to see this feature getting attention. My $0.02 on some requirements that I don't believe I saw expressed earlier (but apologies if I missed):

  • Ideally, this would be implemented as an option in any feeds where possible. I understand that some algorithmic discovery-oriented feeds would not be feasible; however, in cases where you may have feeds that are merely sets of users and whatever they post, it should be an option.
  • Timeline position for each feed where this is enabled should be persisted server-side so that it can be synchronized across clients/devices. Many users (at least me!) migrate from phone to laptop to tablet and back again over the course of a day. We'd like to resume where we left off regardless of which client/device we're on.
  • The option to skip to the top is handy, but also a potential landmine if accidentally tapped/selected. Some suggested mitigations: 1) similar to the kindle when jumping ahead, provide a option to "return to previous position" and don't clear that position unless the user explicitly requests to do so, 2) allow for creating timeline location markers that users can return to, i.e., give them the ability at any point to set a marker and also a means to return to it/them, 3) before jumping to the top, pop-up a dialog and require an affirmative confirmation that the user wants to go to the top (or at least include as a configurable option).

@madalienist
Copy link

madalienist commented Nov 29, 2024

Very psyched to see this feature getting attention. My $0.02 on some requirements that I don't believe I saw expressed earlier (but apologies if I missed):

  • Ideally, this would be implemented as an option in any feeds where possible. I understand that some algorithmic discovery-oriented feeds would not be feasible; however, in cases where you may have feeds that are merely sets of users and whatever they post, it should be an option.
  • Timeline position for each feed where this is enabled should be persisted server-side so that it can be synchronized across clients/devices. Many users (at least me!) migrate from phone to laptop to tablet and back again over the course of a day. We'd like to resume where we left off regardless of which client/device we're on.
  • The option to skip to the top is handy, but also a potential landmine if accidentally tapped/selected. Some suggested mitigations: 1) similar to the kindle when jumping ahead, provide a option to "return to previous position" and don't clear that position unless the user explicitly requests to do so, 2) allow for creating timeline location markers that users can return to, i.e., give them the ability at any point to set a marker and also a means to return to it/them, 3) before jumping to the top, pop-up a dialog and require an affirmative confirmation that the user wants to go to the top (or at least include as a configurable option).

bspaulding1,

I don’t think that saving the location data to the server is going to work with the protocol. Mainly because the protocol is sort of independent of the host. Tweetbot offered the cross-device option in their app for Twitter. What they did for cross device support was to save the info in a user provided online service. For iOS it was iCloud, but they may have supported Google Drive.

I like the option to return to location. I also like the option of having this for certain feeds and not others.

@bspaulding1
Copy link

madalienist - yeah, you're right about the use of a 3rd-party storage mechanism on Tweetbot or other clients. It's hard to find information on it, but I believe at one point there was a service called "Tweet Marker" (or some such) that could be leveraged across different clients but eventually it shut down. The present protocol doesn't have this timeline position concept, but I see no technical limitation for adding it. It would be another data type not unlike posts, likes, etc. - though it should be private, not public. If not added to the protocol, then yes - it would be in the hands of 3rd party developers to implement.

@rb126
Copy link

rb126 commented Nov 30, 2024

To not risk the perfect becoming the enemy of the good, I think client-side storage of feed position would do for now. Twitter doesn't remember feed position across clients. Let's just get some quick solution or workaround in place for all the users currently losing their position every time they open the app and let the fine devs get on with other demands until a perfect design for this can be assembled. Right now I'd also be happy with a button that jumps back to where I was, after my feed position moves from a refresh. Or a "new posts at the bottom" layout. Or ANYTHING that stops me losing my place in the feed each time I open Bluesky.

@nicolasdejong
Copy link

It seems the devs simply have other priorities. No hard feelings.

Fortunately there is an alternative: use Ivory + SkyBridge. Problem solved.

@julian1956
Copy link

+1

@BallistiX09
Copy link

It seems the devs simply have other priorities. No hard feelings.

Fortunately there is an alternative: use Ivory + SkyBridge. Problem solved.

That's what I'm using just now and it works amazingly well, but it has the downside of not supporting videos yet which isn't great. It would still be nice to have this all properly supported in the official app ideally

@witszymanski
Copy link

I don't get it... So many requests and comments around the internet...

image

It's been 80 years already.

Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment
Labels
feature-request A request for a new feature x:discussing We've seen the request and we're talking about it!
Projects
None yet
Development

No branches or pull requests