10
votes
A way to click through to threads after marking notifications read
I have a UX pain point: From the notifications / new comments (replies) page, if I mark all notifications as read, all the nice, handy links to the threads go poof on the page refresh. So now, I have to manually hunt down all/any of them to return to the OPs and revisit the broader discussions.
Can we make the "mark all read" link do its job without clearing the page? I realize this will probably make things more complicated (a notif that is already seen/read is being displayed on the "unread notifs" page, so how will that work, UI- and UX-wise), but... this is just a pain point that I hit again and again. I thought I could tolerate it (which is why I haven't said anything till now), but it's an issue for me nearly every single time.
I guess opening the threads in new tabs before clearing notifs is a functional workaround.
Related to this, I tend to go to the New Comments page, see someone has replied to something I wrote and then click to go to the thread so I can see it in context. Unfortunately, that takes me to the top of the page, and now I have to hunt around for the specific reply. It would be nice if it took me either directly to the reply or to the top of the thread the reply is about. I usually want to remember what I said before the reply to my comment.
If you click the "Link" button on the comment (to the right of how long ago it was posted), it will go directly to that comment, or click "Parent" and it will go to the comment they were replying to (your comment) instead.
Oh, that's awesome! It's exactly what I want. However, the text is light gray (at least with the Gruvbox Light theme) so it looks like it's disabled, and the names "link" and "parent" aren't the most descriptive. I wonder if making the text bold like the clickable items below the post (Vote, Label, Bookmark, etc.) would have made it more obvious to me? And perhaps names like "Go to comment in thread" and "Go to parent in thread" or something like that would be more obvious?
It also took me awhile to notice the parent link next to replies, I was going to there thread and hunting down where I made my comment each time.
The parent link is very handy but I think should be a little more obvious.
Related: an option to always show the immediate parent inline to all my inbox replies?