Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.

Looking to learn something new?

Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.

Start your free trial

General Discussion

Posted by eirikvaa
eirikvaa
18,015 Points

Team Treehouse Forum Feature Requests

Hi,

Since I joined late November last year I have had some thoughts about how one could improve the forum, and below are some of my suggestions:

  • It would be great if we could subscribe to topics we are interested in and just get an email when someone has started a discussion of that topic. Of course, if there are a lot of discussions popping up at the same time you could have an email sent containing the last 5 discussions.
  • It would be helpful to give the one who starts a discussion the ability to mark the discussion (which more than often contains a question or a problem) as completed or solved as opposed to just marking best answers. This would then be reflected in the overview of latest discussions (maybe with a marked symbol or as it is today when someone marks the best answer).
  • The ability to delete comments one has made would be helpful.
  • It might be worth discussing whether or not one should open all external links in forum posts in a new tab rather than in the same tab.

Would love to get some feedback on these suggestions. Do you agree or disagree? Please share your own if you have some and I’ll add them to the list. The forum is already great and I love it, but one can always find things to improve.

2 Answers

Matthew Mascioni
Matthew Mascioni
20,444 Points
Matthew Mascioni
Matthew Mascioni
20,444 Points

Hi Eirik,

Great ideas! I'm gonna tag Faye Bridge in this. Thanks for sharing :)

eirikvaa
eirikvaa
18,015 Points

Awesome, thanks :)

Colin Marshall
Colin Marshall
32,861 Points
Colin Marshall
Colin Marshall
32,861 Points

I like those ideas.

I've been waiting (a long time) for them to add target="blank" to all external links in forum posts so they open in new tabs. It's kind of annoying having to click back every time I click a link, and then have to tell it to open that link in a new tab. If somebody posts a codepen link for example, why would you want the default behavior to open the codepen in the same tab? You're going to need to go back and forth between the user's post and their code. Not to sound like a snob but I feel like this should have been a no-brainer.

James Barnett
James Barnett
39,199 Points

> Not to sound like a snob but I feel like this should have been a no-brainer.

Seems like a lot of UX peeps would beg to differ with you on this point.

Colin Marshall
Colin Marshall
32,861 Points

Thanks for the reads! As a general rule I can see why target="_blank" would be bad, and don't disagree there. But you have to consider each situation individually.

The Smashing Magazine article you linked has a section called "Every Rule Has An Exception." It says: It is appropriate to enforce opening links in a new window in case the link may interrupt an ongoing process.

Is answering a forum question not an ongoing process?

Food for thought!