21 votes

"Parent" links added to comments

Posted by Deimos
Tags: changelog

This isn't a huge update, but it should make navigating around the larger comment threads a little easier. There's now a "Parent" link in each comment's header (unless it's a top-level comment), right after the "Link". This is also present on user pages and in your notifications as well, for if you'd rather jump to the parent instead of the comment itself.

When you're using it from inside a comment thread, I also added some extra behavior to it: when it jumps you up to the parent comment, it will add a "[Back]" link at the end of that comment's header, which you can click to jump back to the comment you clicked "Parent" from. This can be used in a "chain" as well - you can click "Parent" multiple times to go back up a few levels in a thread, and then use the "[Back]" links on each one to get back down to where you started.

Hope that helps, let me know if you notice any weird behavior or have any feedback about it.

Edit: completely unrelated extra note - hey, we've made it to 3-char topic IDs already (this one is 103)

6 comments

  1. cfabbro
    Link
    đź‘Ť Thanks... in some of the bigger threads it was getting increasingly hard to tell what people were responding to (especially on mobile). p.s. that [back] function is also super handy!

    đź‘Ť Thanks... in some of the bigger threads it was getting increasingly hard to tell what people were responding to (especially on mobile).

    p.s. that [back] function is also super handy!

    4 votes
  2. [5]
    Parliament
    Link
    This is great. Thank you! Any plans to implement a context feature that links/highlights a child comment but loads at the desired parent comment?

    This is great. Thank you! Any plans to implement a context feature that links/highlights a child comment but loads at the desired parent comment?

    2 votes
    1. [4]
      Deimos
      Link Parent
      Definitely possible, but maybe a bit tricky depending how we want it to work. When you use a context link on reddit, it does a special "restricted" view of the thread that only shows the direct...

      Definitely possible, but maybe a bit tricky depending how we want it to work. When you use a context link on reddit, it does a special "restricted" view of the thread that only shows the direct parents of the highlighted one. So far with the Link/Parent ones I've always just been using the whole comment thread, which probably wouldn't work very well for the context usage.

      2 votes
      1. Parliament
        Link Parent
        Oh that’s true. And I don’t necessarily love that restricted view on reddit either.

        Oh that’s true. And I don’t necessarily love that restricted view on reddit either.

        1 vote
      2. [2]
        cfabbro
        Link Parent
        Can HTML anchors even support a context system (e.g. postid/#anchorid?context=4) that maybe just auto-collapses all comments in between on the sort, or would you have to transition to a comment...

        Can HTML anchors even support a context system (e.g. postid/#anchorid?context=4) that maybe just auto-collapses all comments in between on the sort, or would you have to transition to a comment permalinks feature similar to reddit?

        1. Deimos
          Link Parent
          It'd probably be possible with some JS, but I think I'd rather find a method that doesn't require it (which might be easier in the end anyway).

          It'd probably be possible with some JS, but I think I'd rather find a method that doesn't require it (which might be easier in the end anyway).

          1 vote