A First Look At Discourse, A Next-Generation System For Forums

Forums are an important part of the Internet, but they’re also one of its most dated ones. I mean, when have you last used a forum and were wowed by how simple and fun it was? Alternative discussion systems like Stack Overflow. Quora, and even Reddit were all developed as ways to surface high-quality content that escaped the traditional drawbacks of forums.

And yet, the forum is alive and well, embodied in XDA developers (just one of the seven best forums for learning about Android, for example). That’s because, well, forums are needed. But do they really have to be so cumbersome? Certainly not, says Discourse, a cutting-edge project from Jeff Atwood, one of Stack Overflow’s founders. Let’s break Discourse down a bit, to see what it offers.

It’s a Work in Progress

That screenshot shows an error I got on Discourse this morning. That’s not to say the service is bad, but just that it isn’t ready yet: Atwood and his team feel things have progressed far enough to share them with the world, but that doesn’t mean it’s a complete working product. There’s no definitive feature list, the demo they have online now resets every 24 hours, and you will see the random error popping up here and there. But it’s more than impressive enough to look at.

Topic Listing

Rather than use a large hierarchy of forums and sub-forums, Discourse uses categories that feel a bit like tags:

Much like Stack Overflow, there are just a limited subset of categories you can pick from when authoring a new post:

Initially, the overview page mixes content from all different categories, but can be quickly filtered down to just a single category:

You can see who’s participating in each discussion at a glance; this view only shows up to five participants, even if a discussion has many more.

Single Topic View

Discourse is a forum, and just like every forum, it has a topic view:

At first blush, it seems similar to many other forums. An original post, followed by a reply (or 150,000, if you’re on XDA Developers). But what’s that bar under the original post? Let’s take a closer look:

This info bar appears only under the first post in a thread, displaying the thread’s vital statistics at a glance: This thread was created three days ago and last updated two days ago (it seems like not all posts are removed with every reset of the demo site). The other stats are just as easy to follow, and the avatars at the end show you who’s participating.

Authoring a Topic

Both replying and authoring a new topic happens in a bar that floats at the bottom of the screen. You can either write using BBCode or Markdown. The right side of the pane renders your text as you type, making it easy to spot any formatting errors without having to click a Preview button.

On the top-right corner of the bar, there’s a little down-arrow letting you minimize the toolbar. You can click it mid-post, and this is what happens:

Discourse saves your draft in the background, server-side. This means you can log off, go to a different computer, log back on, and continue writing right where you left off. But even if you don’t switch machines, being able to minimize the post and having it just a click away is a great way to browse other topic for reference. It makes it easier to carefully author replies, because you don’t need another browser tab to work with existing posts.

User View

Just like many other forum systems, Discourse offers a user profile page:

The Discourse page, however, is a far cry from any other forum user page I’ve seen before. The sidebar lets you slice and dice that user’s activity, and you can click into every post they made, see what they liked, and so on. Note the “Trust Level” entry at bottom-left: Just like Stack Overflow (and the other StackExchange websites), Discourse has a self-policing system built into it. Looking through Discourse’s “meta” forum (a forum containing discussions about the platform) did not reveal much additional information about the feature, but I did dredge up a thread on automating trust that mentions a ratio between “flags” and posts as a way to detect bad users (i.e., if you don’t post very much, but a great many of your posts are flagged as bad content, you probably deserve a low trust level).

Unlike Stack Overflow, where the user’s point rank is very prominently displayed, in Discourse it has been abstracted into a “trust level” and squeezed into a tiny corner of the user’s profile. That feels like a conscious design choice: Forums are often more “democratic” than dedicated Q&A sites like StackExchange.

Not an End, But a Beginning

I love Stack Overflow, and Discourse currently gives an indication of being just as disruptive, exciting, and fresh. What you don’t see in the screenshots is how fluid and airy the system feels: Interactions are smooth even at this early stage, and the UI really does feel re-imagined. I, for one, hope to see Discourse become a powerhouse platform in the world of Internet forums. Did you try it out? What did you think?

The post A First Look At Discourse, A Next-Generation System For Forums appeared first on MakeUseOf.

Get Tweeting On Windows Phone With Multiple Account Support!

Although the platform supports social networking integration, there is still a need for full apps of services such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter on Windows Phone.

A quick look at the Windows Phone apps + games service (where you can find Twitter) will reveal an endless list of Twitter related apps for the device – which is strange as Twitter functions (such as Tweeting and retweeting) can be found in the People Hub!

So, why do so many Twitter apps exist, and why would you choose the official Twitter app as your preferred choice?

The answers are interesting…

Why Does Windows Phone Need a Twitter App?

When you boot up a Windows Phone and head to the People Hub, you will see a list of your contacts, their telephone numbers and email addresses. If you add a social networking account to your phone, you will also see what these people are up to on services such as Facebook and LinkedIn.

Twitter can also be added, but like Facebook and LinkedIn, integration is limited.

That is to say that although you can see what people are posting, you cannot necessarily fully engage with the service in the way you might with a dedicated app. For instance, the People Hub doesn’t support Twitter lists.

As a result, there is an official Twitter app for Windows Phone. There are also many third party apps all trying to improve on the original, with varying degrees of success.

Twitter App Features

The Windows Phone Twitter app has various features and functions that make it an attractive choice. Although it could be argued that there are better alternatives available, it remains the best of the free to use, ad-free Twitter apps.

Providing support for multiple Twitter accounts, hashtags, photo uploads, insertion of usernames from your friends (enabling you to direct messages @ them) the app also provides location-aware support (which can be disabled) and directs notifications to the Start screen when you’re mentioned or your posts are retweeted. Search is also available, as is access to custom lists.

There are also two themes available, dark and light, but sadly there is not a live tile feature which would display the number of retweets, for instance (a feature available with other Twitter apps).

Tweeting, Retweeting and Configuring

The most important thing about this Twitter app, however, is that it is easy to use.

To make a new Tweet, all you need to do is tap the Compose button, and enter your thoughts using the keyboard, complete with autocorrect options. It is from this screen that you can add photos, either from your library of images or from either of your Windows Phone’s cameras. Direct messages can also be sent using the Message button, although note that as per Twitter’s rules, these can only be directed to someone that you are following and who is also following you.

You can view your own profile with this app, and while doing so you will notice that there is an Edit profile option in the ellipses menu. Editing options allow a new profile picture, display name, description, location and website to be added.

Good App or Bad App?

A check of the rating for this app on the Windows Phone app store will reveal an app with around 3 stars out of 5. I’m not totally sure what the individual users that have left a low rating have found wrong with the official Twitter apps as the problems described are not anything I’ve ever come across on either a Windows Phone 7 or a Windows Phone 8 handset.

Speed issues affect all Twitter apps (usually due to capacity problems), and as this official version offers multiple account support (rare among even some of the paid third party apps) there really is no reason not to recommend this free application.

Conclusion

The official Windows Phone Twitter app is published by Twitter (some “official” apps are released by Microsoft) so there is plenty of reason to expect a solid, slick and full-featured app.

While Twitter search is present, this app can unfortunately be slow at times, although that is often due to issues with the Twitter service itself. Most frustrating, perhaps, is the “gap in time” created between uses of the app. This effectively means that when you’re not using, and your Twitter activity continues elsewhere (perhaps on your PC), the app doesn’t display anything when it is relaunched apart from what it is happening on Twitter at that very moment.

This can prove very frustrating.

However, given the support for multiple accounts, camera and images, lists and direct messages, this is a very good Twitter app that is free to use but could do with some behind-the-scenes improvements to keep it relevant.

The post Get Tweeting On Windows Phone With Multiple Account Support! appeared first on MakeUseOf.

Yummly Lets You Share Recipes Just By Saying “Yum”

Fans of online recipe sites may have heard of Yummly before as it’s been around for a while. But recently it’s had one hell of a spruce-up and added a whole lot of new social features and other updates to the site. Browsing Yummly has never looked better and sharing recipes is now as easy as pressing “Yum”.

Yummly launched back in 2010 and is currently one of the fastest-growing food sites on the net. Their main aim is to bring in recipes from all over the web, making the recipes easy for you to search and find your favorites. Now that they’ve added their new social features, they are well and truly ready to become the Pinterest of the food world. Now is the time for you to test out the upgrade and see for yourself!

Yummly’s Re-Vamp

Yummly has always been very useful as a search engine and easy on the eyes, however the recent overhaul has made it look fabulous. The recipes are bright and appealing, and each recipe is shown with images of similar recipes alongside it. So if another one catches your eye, you can jump directly to that recipe instead.

As well as bigger photos, Yummly has added new recipe sources, improved the search functions so that it’s smoother and faster, and added taste profiles to give better recommendations to you. The rating of each recipe is now more accurate, incorporating Yummly user ratings and other social feedback alongside the reputation of the source site generally.

Yummly Search

Yummly have made recipe search as easy as possible, ensuring all food requirements are taken into consideration. It doesn’t matter if you’re vegetarian, gluten intolerant, hate spinach or just trying to cut back on calories; Yummly lets you filter your results to find just what you’re after. As well as foods you love or hate, you can also filter by holiday celebrations, cuisine, diet, courses, the source site of the recipe, cooking techniques, tastes (e.g. salty, bitter, sweet), nutrition, brands of ingredients or how recently the recipe was added.

When you’re viewing the recipe, you can see the full list of ingredients, links to the original recipe, nutritional information, taste ratings, tags and more. It’s very easy to see if this is something you’re going to enjoy and whether you have all the ingredients on hand.

Social Sharing On Yummly

It’s really easy to share and keep track of the recipes you love using Yummly. Log into Yummly using Facebook or Google credentials and you are ready to go. Logging in will also allow you to save your diet and allergy preferences, plus a few links to social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. You can also choose in settings whether to share your Yummly activities with Facebook or not.

If you have chosen to share your activities with Facebook, share your favorite recipes with Facebook by simply clicking “Yum” on anything you like. Yummly will also keep track of all your “Yum’s” for later. You can also comment on recipes and share those comments with Facebook. Regular social sharing buttons are there too, so you can quickly Tweet, Like, Pin, Stumble or email the recipe.

The “Yum’s” also act as a popularity indicator for the recipe. You can quickly see that a recipe with over 200 “Yum’s” is worth checking out in more detail.

Yummly Remembers What You Like

As long as you are logged in, Yummly can filter every search you do according to your taste preferences, which you can save in your settings. These settings are also easy to override if you change your mind and want to look for something else.

Need More Recipes?

Let’s face it, all cooks need more recipes. The fact that the internet has many great recipe websites doesn’t mean we’re ever going to stick with just one. You can also get your daily dose of food porn from: Epicurious; Foodily; Punchfork; Gojee; great YouTube cooking channels; sites that inspire you to start baking; a number of great vegetarian recipe sites; some old favorite recipe sites; recipe sites with tasty visuals; great sites for holiday recipes.

What do you think of Yummly’s new social features? Will you be sharing your favorite recipes on Facebook?

The post Yummly Lets You Share Recipes Just By Saying “Yum” appeared first on MakeUseOf.