Welcome to Invision Community 5!
Over the coming weeks, we'll be exploring a bunch of new features and improvements coming to our user interface including our brand new theme editor, a new mobile UI, dark mode and performance improvements thanks to a reduction in both JavaScript and CSS. To kick off this series, let’s take a closer look at the new sidebar layout and new view modes for the forum index and topic pages.
Sidebar Layout
Traditionally, Invision Community has shipped with a horizontal header and navigation bar at the top of the page, which is still available in version 5. We're introducing a brand new (and optional) sidebar layout, which can be enabled or disabled easily from within your theme settings. The sidebar not only provides convenient access to your applications, activity streams and search bar, but you can now add links to nodes for even easier access to popular or commonly used areas of your community. For example - a category from your forum, an album from the Gallery, or a product group from Commerce.
Forum Index: Feed view
One of our goals for version 5 was to re-imagine new ways for your visitors to consume content, and the sidebar layout is just one of our solutions. Table view has been the typical way of displaying forums, providing visitors with a simple summary of the most recently active topic. Grid mode introduced cover photos to forums and is a great way to make your page more visually engaging, while fluid view allows visitors to filter through a list of topics to easily focus on multiple areas of the community.
Joining these view modes in version 5 is our new Feed view. Optional cover photos and featured forum colours allow you to personalise each forum, and a list of recently active topics with snippets of the most recent reply allow you to easily see what each forum is focusing on at a glance. The topic list drops below the cover photo and converts to a scrollable list on small devices. It's our fresh take on content display, and we can’t wait to hear your feedback!
Topic pages: Compact view
In addition, Invision Community 5 also introduces a new, compact layout option for topics. We wanted to create a layout which placed focus on your content while still keeping all of the authors profile information easily accessible within a mini profile. Stats, rank, badges, reputation points and more can be found by tapping the icon at the top of every post. The mini profile strip has also been added to other areas of the software too, such as comments and reviews in applications like Gallery and Blogs, and will appear on the mobile layout when the traditional "table view" is used in topics.
Switching between the new compact view and the author sidebar view takes just seconds giving you complete control over your community.
As part of this view, you also have the choice to feature/pin the original post to the top of every page, making it a breeze for your visitors to easily understand the context of replies without navigating back to page 1. Pinned posts have a slightly larger font-size to distinguish them from replies, and we've thoughtfully truncated them on pages beyond the first to keep scrolling to a minimum.
The new sidebar layout and view modes offer a fresh and innovative approach to navigating and interacting with your community. We’re really keen to hear your thoughts on these new views and whether you’ll be unleashing them on your own sites! We appreciate that no two sites are the same, and those who are a fan of the classic header look will benefit from quick styling tools and a visual way to re-arrange the header elements which we’ll cover in a later blog.
We’re looking forward to showcasing a whole bunch of new features over the coming weeks - so stay tuned, and we’ll see you then!
What's New in Version 5.0.0 Beta 9.1
See changelogReleased
#3039: Support latest Tiptap version
#3034: Remove invalid "Edit" menu option on album page
#3033: Fix issues with Business Address field on checkout
#3032: Fixed exception when moving comments to pages
#3021: Fixed alignment and spacing of editor warnings
#3020: UI forms sort translate
#3019: Don't translate usernames when using translate tools
#3018: Fix issues with Word Expansion
#3017: Fix issues with commenting on albums
#3016: Make Table Toolbar consistent with Main Toolbar
#3011: Fixes an issue where URL request can return badly encoded content
#2985: Implement Table Support in Tiptap Editor
- Issue #2970: Beta 8 | "Done" button | Editor
- Issue #2984: [Beta 8] Iframe cannot full screen and some items not loading in iframe page
#3010: Fix issue where topics were generated from database records even when disabled
#3014: Fix issue with posting comments on database records
#3003: Fix issue where users can access a database when there are no module permissions
#3005: Fix issue where getSortableName returns null
#3007: Fix issue where renaming a tag did not update streams
#3002: Fix invalid options in the Comment menu
#3000: Fix google authenticator
#2995: Fix issue with restoring deleted topics
#2996: Improvements to Club Invitation flow
#2999: Restore PHP blocks for managed clients
#2865: Fix issue where logging in with another method automatically merges accounts
#1857: Change email addresses after the email is validated
#2987: Fixed cover photo position in Safari 18.2
#2989: Fixed the direction of certain elements in RTL layouts
#2991: Added image dimensions to download screenshots to fix iOS bug
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