The Core Features team has enabled Flow on this talk page.

• Please conduct testing at Talk:Sandbox, retaining this page for discussions and suggestions.
• If you find bugs not yet tracked, report in Phabricator if you can, and here if you can't.

Previous feedback is on Talk:Flow Portal/Archive2 (using old Liquid Threads), and on our labs server.

Thank (bug report)

When I click on "history" for, e.g., Talk:Phabricator/Help I get an almost ordinary history page without [thank] links. Please fix this (skin monobook, almost all gadgets disabled, Chrome for a few last NPAPI weeks, various sites incl. FB + doubleclick resolved as 127.0.0.1, no 3rd party cookies, central notes etc. AdBlocked, the works.) –Be..anyone 💩 10:25, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

There are [thank] links directly within the flow posts, so do we really need them in the history page, too? I believe they purposefully didn't add them there, to reduce the clutter. I'm not sure if it's better to have more clutter or more consistency...?

However, we do need a way to [thank] for post-edits. I'll file that as phab:T85846. Thanks! Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 20:33, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

They're intentionally also available on diff pages as well as the history page, so I'd say yes, it's designed and expected that there are two routes to thanking users for contributions. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 19:17, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Ok, filed as phab:T85945 Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 19:33, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks! Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 17:10, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Is it possible to link to an uncreated section

As subjct says; is that possible? Christian75 (talk) 14:06, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

If I understand correctly, you want to link to an equivalent of "&section=new" ? That feature is planned, at phab:T59989. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 21:55, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

What do you want?

• phab:T59989 asks for Flow boards to respond to an API request to add the wikitext of a new section. You can't link to that, it's the kind of thing a bot does.
• If you're asking for the equivalent of the [Add topic] tab on talk pages, Flow pages could respond to the same ?action=edit&section=new in the query string by focusing input in the "Start a new topic" input field.
• If you just want a link that scrolls to the "Start a new topic" input field, that field doesn't have an id tag so a link could target e.g. #flow-new-topic. Since there's only one of these forms this seems reasonable (and easy).
• If you want to have a link that opens up the new topic form and pre-fills it with e.g. "Another great suggestion...", then it's doable in JavaScript ($('.flow-newtopic-form .mw-ui-input').focus() ...) and if there's a good use case for it then Flow could support query string parameters that trigger this.
• There's no way to know what the UUID of a new topic will be, it varies with time. So you can't write "Go see my [[Topic:S9ftya9qaez67kjo | Genius Idea]] until you add the new topic (and then copy its permalink).

It turns out that linking to https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Sandbox?action=new-topic might be what you want. You get a standalone form to add a topic (see result). This query string isn't officially supported; it's a side effect of every Flow action being permitted from the query string. So even if it's possible to improve this behavior it seems low priority. SPage (WMF) (talk) 01:16, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

actually the action=new-topic is officially supported, its part of the no-js compatibility. Ebernhardson (talk) 01:37, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

probably only if you can guess this cryptic and user-unfriendly mumbo-jumbo in the url ;) Grüße vom Sänger ♫^(Reden) 14:39, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Are you sure you want to leave this page?

Steps to reproduce:

1) Type something into the "Start a new topic box".

2) Press the Return key.

3) See "Are you sure you want to leave this page? You have unsubmitted changes on this page. Are you sure you want to navigate away and lose your work?"

"Return" in that context should probably either post a message-free subject heading, or it should behave like tabbing and take me to the message box.

Also, the 'Post a new message to "{{PAGENAME}}"' box is usually just one line tall when I start typing (Safari 6.2.2, Mac OS 10.8.5, Vector). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:23, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

That erroneous confirmation is phab:T86286, and seems to be Mac-specific. I've added your details.

The multiline-text-areas occasionally not expanding, is now filed as phab:T86873.

Thanks. :) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 02:02, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

New feature: Table of Contents

We're releasing a new Flow feature today on mediawiki -- a Table of Contents, which is designed to help people browse and navigate around a Flow board.

As you scroll down on a Flow board, you'll see a persistent header that gives you access to the Table of Contents, wherever you are on the page. You can scroll around using the Table of Contents, and hop quickly from one topic to another.

The current feature is version 1 -- there are a few more tweaks that we want to make, so there will be a v2 coming. This is also a milestone on the road to Search -- we're going to build the feature to search on a Flow board on top of the ToC feature.

It's going live here a little later today. I'm looking forward to hearing what you all think of it! DannyH (WMF) (talk) 19:50, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

It's pretty subtle. It took me a moment to realize that it was actually there. I was expecting to see (without needing to click on anything) an actual list, and therefore something that displayed more than one line of text (by default). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 05:33, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm in agreement here that it would have taken me some time to notice it without the announcement. I understand the choice that the list should be clicked on because the TOC loads all topics, and it wouldn't be feasible to display them all at once and push down the rest of the page.

Hey here's an idea. I remember when I opened up the TOC, it covered up the comments on the page. Not a big deal, perhaps, but is there any chance the TOC might be put over in that white space over on the right side there? One benefit to doing this is that opening the TOC would cover up less or none of the comments on the left side of the frame. It might also help it pop-out a little more. I JethroBT (talk) 16:34, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, we started with the idea that the ToC would be on the right. The idea that won me over to this version is the header changing as you scroll through, to reflect the thread that you're currently on. But if people don't see it, then that's definitely a problem we'll need to solve.

We're doing some user testing late next week on the ToC and a prototype for Search, and one of the basic things we're testing for the ToC is if people actually notice it and use it. :) The tests will be with people who are familiar with wiki talk pages (either reading or contributing to them), so they won't be brand-new newbies. If we see people completely missing the ToC, then we will definitely take steps. DannyH (WMF) (talk) 18:06, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

The problem I see with the new ToC design is that it doesn't even look clickable at all.

If people doesn't see it, a first step to test before recovering the "floating ToC on the right" may be to show it expanded by default when the page is scrolled to the top, showing a preview of the first (last) 6-8 topics and a "browse all" link that unfolds the whole pop-up. Scrolling down would fold the box to its current one-line-tall, current-title behavior.

Painting it blue (the color of links) instead of the current grey may also help. Diego Moya (talk) 13:27, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

Hey DannyH (WMF). I did a little playing around with it over the last 10 minutes or so. I like how I can CTRL-F through the topics once I've opened it up if I know the topic name and don't want to scroll down through all of it. I also like that even if I haven't loaded the entire page, it will still bring me to a topic that's been well-buried at the bottom of list. I did notice that it takes slightly longer (due to the loading) in this case, but I think that's OK.

I did notice something a little strange-- when scrolling through the list with my mouse wheel (Mouse button 3, it sometimes called), I did notice that sometimes it will scroll the through topic list, but sometimes it would switch to scrolling on the background window. Not sure if this is an artifact of monobook or not (which I am using). I'm going to check real fast with vector. I JethroBT (talk) 06:20, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Hm. Well, I can reproduce the same scrolling issue in vector, but it's kind of hard to describe in words. There seems be some interval of loading time for the topic list after it is visible where the cursor is confused about what part of the screen it is focused on. If you move your mouse around a bit over the topic list, however, the problem appears to fix itself and scrolling is squarely on the topic list rather than the talk page. I JethroBT (talk) 06:27, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I can repro that scrolling issue in chrome as well. Erik Moeller (WMF) (talk) 08:58, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Oh, thanks for the report. I know that there's been a scrolling issue when it reaches the bottom of the list and there's nowhere else to scroll to -- but it sounds like you're having a different problem. It's happening for you before you hit the end of the list? DannyH (WMF) (talk) 01:42, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Correct, I can produce the error immediately after I opened it up. I JethroBT (talk) 15:42, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, I can see it in Chrome. It's not happening in Firefox.

I filed a Phabricator ticket for it -- we'll take care of it. Thanks!

https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T87041 DannyH (WMF) (talk) 18:09, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Great to see this live.

Small thing: I find the alignment between the sort order ("Newest topics") and the TOC confusing. It makes it look like I can sort the TOC. Erik Moeller (WMF) (talk) 08:59, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree it's a little confusing. That's something we'll change when we build the Search feature -- Search and ToC will work together as part of the same bar, and the sort order will be in a more obviously separate place. DannyH (WMF) (talk) 01:43, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Congratulations for the good work. I've been advocating for a table of contents in Flow and following its design iterations from afar, and the results are fairly reasonable. It's a simple and non-intrusive feature that gets the work done, which is something quite difficult to achieve.

I've found a case of a behavior that is not intuitive. After jumping to a topic way down in the middle of the board, scrolling down does the right thing and shows the next topic; but scrolling up triggers a loading animation (so far so good), and when it ends, it jumps to the first topic in the batch of new topics. This is quite surprising, as the expected behavior is to show the end of topic right above the one where I jumped first.

For example, if I jump to "WIBNI infinite scrolling" and scroll up, I'd expect to see the end of "Have bugs been fixed?" which is the immediately previous one, and instead the screen flickers and the scroll bar jumps to the totally unrelated "Topic appears two times". Diego Moya (talk) 17:33, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes, that's one of the pieces we want to improve for v2. The board loads topics in batches of ten, but we wanted people to be able to jump quickly to the topic that you choose in the table of contents. So we load the topic that you jumped to, but if you scroll up from there, then we have to load another batch.

In that situation, it should leave you at the bottom of the newly-loaded topics, so that it feels like you're still in the same place on the board. The current version pops you up to the top of the new set, which feels disjointed, like you said. We'll be working on this over the next few weeks.

I'm glad you mentioned it -- it was one of those pieces that made us say, "When we work on this, is anyone going to notice or care?" It's good to know that you did, thanks. :) DannyH (WMF) (talk) 01:49, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Activate on sv:User talk:Nirmos

Hi. Can you activate Flow on sv:User talk:Nirmos? Nirmos (talk) 19:07, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Hi, they're currently only activating Flow on new wikis (and pages) very slowly, in order to concentrate on a manageable quantity of features-in-development, and bugs to be examined, at a time. Thanks for your interest though! If you add your name to the (very low frequency, but overdue for a new update) newsletter list at w:Wikipedia:Flow/Newsletter#At other Wikimedia locations, you'll find out when there are new volunteer-locations being looked for, or new features being released. Hope that helps. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 22:33, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

converting stuff

I would like to ask about progress in this area. Gryllida 02:15, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

Add some delay to the hover actions

The hover actions shouldn't pop up immediately on mouseover. This way it often accidentaly opens on scrolling / navigating over the page.

Add some delay. Not sure what is good, maybe 100 ms. Google may know. Subfader (talk) 00:37, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Bump. The behaviour is still there and annoying. Subfader (talk) 18:04, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

I've filed this suggestion as phab:T108658. Thanks for the idea, and apologies for the delay. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 01:25, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Upon posting a reply, all comments in a thread appear to have been posted "45 years ago"