Topic thumbnails, uploads, and media display
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There have been some scattered feedback on a change I made for v4.0.0 that caught some people off-guard: Uploaded media is now shown in addition to topic thumbnails.
I’ll start with why this change was made, and then solicit feedback.
The why
v4.0.0 introduced ActivityPub integration into NodeBB. This added dimension meant that content was consumed in a manner that was similar, but unfamiliar to NodeBB, and so much of the work involved normalizing that data into a format that made sense. (As an aside, I tell people that that’s pretty much 99% of my job — glueing together APIs. I jest, but it’s also basically true.)
One of those unfamiliar aspects was uploaded media in the form of attachments. NodeBB had discrete concepts of inline media and topic thumbnails, but attachments were something different entirely. Attachments were not inlined in the text (they tended to be added before or after the main content), and thumbnails were images only, while attachments could be lots of other things.
The second part was that a lot of the content I received relied on media to do the heavy lifting. Oftentimes the text would be minimal and in response to the attachment. After all, a picture’s worth a thousand words.
Given those two things, I allowed NodeBB to consume and store attachments separately, and updated the topic thumbnail retrieval logic to pull media from both post attachments and inline media. That retrieval logic is what governs what you see next to the title. I also decided on the all-in approach because while NodeBB has multiple ways of slotting media, majority of ActivityPub software generally only uses attachments. There is movement toward changing this, and so this rationale may no longer make sense today.
I initially did have concerns that perhaps this would dilute the meaning and specificity of the “topic thumbnail”, but I also wagered that the UX improvement of promoting any and all media found would be of greater benefit.
Your turn — feedback!
Maybe I’m wrong!
- Perhaps the media row is best used to showcase topic thumbnails and post attachments only (not inlined media.)
- Perhaps a configurable option would appease all folks (although I’m usually loathe to add options purely for that reason.)
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julian said in Topic thumbnails, uploads, and media display:
> Perhaps the media row is best used to showcase topic thumbnails and post attachments only (not inlined media.)This makes sense I think :think:
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julian Thanks for the detailed explanation and the improvements in v4.0.0. I have two questions/suggestions regarding the media display:
Differentiating Local Posts from ActivityPub Content
Is it possible to configure NodeBB to display only the first image within the post content as the topic thumbnail for posts created directly on the forum, and exclude attachments? This would help maintain a cleaner look for locally created topics while still accommodating ActivityPub content as needed.Displaying Multiple Thumbnails with a Count Indicator
Could we have a feature where, if a topic contains multiple images, only the first image is displayed as the thumbnail, accompanied by a small overlay indicating the total number of images (e.g., “+3”)? This approach is similar to how multiple images are currently represented in the topic list view and would provide a consistent user experience.
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This is part of the balancing act that happens when federating with different types of social media. I think that it is a really good thing that you are taking into account that some posts will be more image-centric than others.
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