Improvements to Discussion Viewing & Message Stream (Version 1.0.5)

Hi everyone,

Today we have rolled out improvements to the discussion view and homepage stream, along with many other bug fixes and UI improvements. We'll go over the more noticeable improvements below.

Discussion View

• If you come back to a discussion you've previously viewed, we now automatically collapse the replies you've already seen, and we scroll the view down to the first unread reply. This should make it much easier to follow along on active discussions.
• You'll notice a new dropdown button above the replies, on the upper/right side of the page. By default it's set to show you replies since your last visit, but there you can easily expand/collapse replies based on their date posted.
• Collapsed replies give you a short preview of who/what was posted, but you can also tap on a collapsed reply to expand it, or tap at the top of an expanded reply to collapse it again.
• The discussion metadata and corporate partner boxes now appear inline on the upper/right side of the discussion, allowing the message and replies to flow around it, rather than absorbing a lot of unused space on the right side of the discussion. This should give the replies more room, especially at deeper nesting levels.
• The layout of replies has been improved to use space more efficiently on smaller devices. (We'll be making similar changes soon to the homepage stream.)
• The date/time stamps on replies are now links back directly to those replies, so you can copy/paste them if you want to link someone directly to a specific reply.

Homepage Message Stream

• We've rearranged the layout slightly so that the filtering/search options are on top of the message stream, which makes them more easily accessible, especially on small devices. The most common filtering options are visible immediately, and the search box is available by tapping the magnifying glass icon up above the stream. (This is also where we will be offering more advanced search options down the road.)
• You can now filter the discussions by vehicle make. We show some common vehicle family options at the top of the list, such as All Ford, GM, FCA, Asian, Euro, etc. Then the more popular makes are shown, and at the bottom, an option to expand the filter to show you ALL makes.
• The timestamp shown on each discussion now reflects the date/time of the latest reply in the discussion, rather than the date/time of when the message was first posted. If you mouse over the timestamp, you can also see the date/time the discussion was first started.

Upcoming Improvements

We have a very long list of features and improvements in our backlog, but our next immediate areas of focus will be: 

• Message editing. We're going to start with the ability to edit your newly posted messages, within 5 minutes of posting them. Later we'll expand that to allow you to edit your messages whenever you want. (We need to take the time to get this second feature right, so that people aren't confused about what has been changed in a message that's already been seen/discussed.)
• Setting your preferred makes, similar to how you can set your favorite topics in Watched Topics.
• Remembering your filter choices for the homepage stream, so that you can choose to only see your favorite topics (and makes) each time you return.
• Embedding videos and other file types, and improving how links are displayed, so that they provide a snippet/preview of the destination material.
• General improvements in file uploading, viewing and sharing.
• Continued optimization for small devices. Next up will be improvements to the homepage stream.
• Integrating medium- and heavy-duty vehicle data into DN, so that it's easier to tag and discuss these vehicles.
• Improving the homepage stream to highlight new activity in discussions you're participating in or watching.

Thanks for your patience. We look forward to many improvements over the next few weeks and months! If you have any other feature requests or bug reports, please send them to us at support@diag.net, or start a discussion in the Diagnostic Network topic.