Notifications drop down

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  maddogtvdinners · Member · Jan 16, 2015 at 5:52 pm

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  Thanks for all your hard work, but I really hate the new Notifications drop down (top right of the page). The old style one was much easier to use and nicer to look at.

  The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

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  rachelmcr · Member · Jan 23, 2015 at 5:14 pm

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  Hi there,

  Thanks for your feedback. Are there specific actions that you find harder to do with the new Notifications drop down? If there are specific things you’re having trouble with, I can share that with our team.

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  maddogtvdinners · Member · Jan 23, 2015 at 5:35 pm

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  Hi Rachel,

  Thanks for getting back to me.

  The new Notifications drop down is counter intuitive. It takes up more screen space and is more complicated to use. The old menu kept things neat and tidy and showed the whole list while making comments. The new drop down takes one away from the whole list and requires more clicks. I’m now inclined not to use it at all, in favour of going direct to the post and commenting there instead.

  I genuinely appreciate all the work you and the team do for WordPress, but sometimes you seem to change things for the sake of it, rather than changing things to make them better. I’m a great believer in form and function having equal importance.

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  rachelmcr · Member · Jan 27, 2015 at 11:53 am

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  Hi there,

  Thank you for that feedback! One of our goals with the new notifications is to make it easier to use across platforms (including desktops/laptops and mobile devices) and a faster experience. You mentioned that the new version takes more clicks — have you tried using the up/down arrows to navigate from one notification to the next? (You can also use the up/down arrows on your keyboard if you prefer.) That can be faster and take fewer clicks than navigating back to the main list if you’re scrolling through a lot of notifications.

  In any case, I’ll share your comments with our team so we can take them into consideration as we move forward. :)

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  maddogtvdinners · Member · Jan 27, 2015 at 12:01 pm

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  Sorry, but I think you missed the point – more clicks or fiddling around with the up and down arrows makes the redesign harder to navigate than before.
  I believe in Keep It Simple Stupid when it comes to interface design and not more complicated and irritating. Some of the constant tinkering at WP is a constant irritation for users.

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  jrosenberry1 · Member · Feb 2, 2015 at 9:09 am

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  The (ahem) “improved” notifications bar is not working again.

  The only thing that shows up in the notifications is “no activity yet” — and a link saying “look for inspiration” which takes you to “freshly pressed”.

  This, when the old notifications page shows me that I have pages and pages and pages of activity.

  So …. what’s going on, please….

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  shawnajroberts · Member · Feb 6, 2015 at 6:59 pm

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  @jrosenberry1 – I’m not seeing any issues with the notifications drop down. Are you still having trouble with this? Can you open your own thread so we can resolve this more quickly?

  https://en.forums.wordpress.com/?new=1

  @maddogtvdinners – Rachel has already logged your feedback about there being too many actions to see your notifications, but I’ll add that using the arrows to navigate is not ideal for you.

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  maddogtvdinners · Member · Feb 7, 2015 at 3:45 pm

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  I can’t help thinking that the solution here would be to make the Notification Bar easy to use on phones and tablets without penalising computer users.

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  shawnajroberts · Member · Feb 7, 2015 at 4:24 pm

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  I can’t help thinking that the solution here would be to make the Notification Bar easy to use on phones and tablets without penalising computer users.

  This is actually already our goal. We design everything responsively so that it’s displayed optimally for all device sizes. We are looking at everyone’s feedback and the developers are still making updates as we type.

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  wyrdsmythe · Member · Feb 13, 2015 at 5:17 pm

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  Add me to the list of folks who don’t care for the new notifications dropdown. I recognize you’re doing it for the mobile crowd, and I’m getting used to it over time, but what I’d really like is the old notifications page back. That one seemed to give me greater access to older comments and a sense of more elbow room.

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  shawnajroberts · Member · Feb 13, 2015 at 5:22 pm

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  For the time being, you can still access the old notifications page here:

  https://wordpress.com/notifications

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  maddogtvdinners · Member · Feb 13, 2015 at 5:43 pm

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  I agree with wyrdsmythe – the old menu was far more useful and the link to a separate page is hardly easy to use in comparison to the old drop down menu.

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  wyrdsmythe · Member · Feb 13, 2015 at 5:46 pm

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  @shawnajroberts: Ah, thank you!! That put a ray of sunlight on the day — bless you. Can we make “For the time being”… “Forever”? XD