980818 - Every question requires a scroll for no reason I can see.

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(support.mozilla.org :: Questions, task)

Description

[Matt]

Attachment: sumospace.png

Attached is an image of the existing question display, with a red rectangle on it.  I don't know how to describe it, but that appears to be wasted space requiring scrolling without purpose.  

Can the Question and the reply be placed on the same page? I find scrolling in this situation with a 23" monitor somewhat like bettering my own fish at the fish shop.

Comment 1

[Ricky Rosario [:rrosario, :r1cky]]

Attachment: Screen Shot 2014-03-07 at 4.14.28 AM.png

That screenshot is cutting out the reason for the empty space. The question and each answer have related items in the side bar. You can collapse all the boxes to the right of the question and all the answers will come back up (See attachment). We do remember the state so you don't have to re-collapse them every time.

Other than that, there isn't much that can be done without redesigning the page in some way.

Comment 2

[Kadir Topal [:atopal]]

Also, this is only available to logged-in users. Normal visitors don't even have most of the options that would create that gap. I'm closing this as WORKSFORME, let me know if you feel differently.

Comment 3

[Matt]

Well I feel quite differently, and that is why I filled the bug.  The fact that the poor design/layout is dependent on the content of the second column makes it self evident that there is a design problem.  My RSS feeds don't jump up and down based on the content of the advertising column on the left of the web page.  However I will just have to close all that stuff down and try and make the interface comfortable to me.  There does not appear to be anything useful there anyway, other than the tags and the product.  Both of which I would have thought important.

Comment 4

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

The normal visitor isn't reading dozens of web pages/sumo topics per week.  "We" are.

So I also think it's reasonable to improve this. Though perhaps not a high prior.

Comment 5

[Kadir Topal [:atopal]]

Wayne, can you help me understand the issue? What exactly should we improve?

Comment 6

[Matt]

Attachment: bugpost1.png

A screen shot of the community screen in Get Satisfaction,  initial view on arrival 6 questions.  Moving to the second page and the number goes out to a dozen.  Compared to SUMO having 1 and a bit before a scroll.

Comment 7

[Matt]

Attachment: bugpost.png

Further image of the actual question, the original reason for posting this bug.  Note that there a three replies visible and all the moderation information on the right does not cause a problem.

Compare that to SUMO where once the question is selected, no replies are visible without scrolling.  As a matter of fact once the windows is scrolled far enough to read the first reply, the question is gone off the top of the screen.

Comment 8

[rsx11m]

Just having come from GS to SUMO for TB support, I agree with Matt that the layout wastes a lot of space. The problem shown here is that the structure of the <article> element is such that the <div> for the question is tied in height to the <div> of the sidebar. Thus, expanding the sidebar forces the question to be padded below to create the space as shown. This is not the case in GS where the sidebar is vertically not bound by the question and the replies on the left side.

Now, applying this to SUMO may be less straight-forward as it seems given that there is an "Edit" button in a similar construct which would have to be moved to open the space for a potentially expanding main sidebar (how about next to the "Reply" button, similar to "Quote" and "Edit" in phpBB?; or to the left where other items are listed already anyway?).

Other wastes of space:
 - Fixed width of the question/answer area (commonly seen these days, I know, but if you have a wide screen why shouldn't it adjust to that width to minimize the vertical space needed?).
 - As pointed out in comment #6, a lot of vertical space used for each preview; while that may be a useful feature on occasion, it requires a lot of scrolling if you are just browsing (I'd like to see an option to disable it by default to show more entries per initial view, similar to the forums, possibly with a feature the expands the preview when you click into the question you may be interested in - unless that's pending already, this likely would be separate bug).

Comment 9

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Matt, do you still see this problem, at the top of the question?  I'm not seeing it.

Comment 10

[Michael Cooper [:mythmon]]

This hasn't changed. The reason you aren't seeing it is probably because you have the "Question Details" section on the right collapsed, which takes up a lot of room.

Comment 11

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Actually, the reason is what I've been looking today at have all been questions with initial posts that are long - like https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1011684. Bug happens primarily when question's initial post is "short" - your example is https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/988834.

> [comment 1] "Other than that, there isn't much that can be done without redesigning the page in some way."
It's mainly the "Question details" that blows the space usage out of the water. Perhaps start there?

Comment 13

[Fabian Rodriguez:MagicFab]

As a new SUMO contributor, this was quite confusing, I even filed a (now marked as duplicate) bug. 

In some occasions I thought there was no answer to a support request when in fact it was below the visible screen space.

I keep all side menu sections expanded to save time when responding to requests, and having to scroll each time, even minimally, is not a time-saver.

Comment 14

[Paul]

Closed as per https://blog.mozilla.org/sumo/2019/06/07/sumo-platform-roadmap/