Exciting New Features & Some Changes To Our Discourse

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Dear Community,

The Discourse software is constantly evolving and with the latest updates there are some changes and new features which we can all take advantage of to enhance our experience here.

Sadly, one feature I mentioned previously has now been deprecated.

Instead, you can still search within longer topics by pressing / inside a topic and then clicking to filter

in topic
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Sample search result

in topic search result
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New Feature

Rich Text Editor

Users can now switch between the classic Markdown editor and a WYSIWYG rich text editor.

Please refer to the official Meta Discourse documentation for more:
https://meta.discourse.org/t/introducing-our-new-composer-making-writing-on-discourse-easier-than-ever/369779

New Feature

Advanced Topic Filter

This is something I personally am very excited about. We already know that Discourse has powerful search functions and this new filter adds an extra level to assist users in homing in on the topics that interest them.

To access the filter click on the hamburger icon

new filter feature
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topic filter
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Clicking inside the filter automatically brings up some of the options you can use

filter options after 1st click
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The Meta Discourse documentation has the complete list of all options available
https://meta.discourse.org/t/filtering-topic-lists-in-discourse/375558

Let’s take a look at one example of what you can do with this new filter.

For example, I want to find topics tagged with nvidia in Support and Help that are open and were created sometime in the last month.

filtered topic
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I highly recommend that you experiment with the options to discover what a powerful tool this can be for our Discourse.

We hope these new features prove to be useful.

Feel free to add comments and feedback and, of course, stay tuned for more in the future.

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When you switch to Rich Text Editor, the preview pane (on the right) disappears.
Is there a setting somewhere to enable it?

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The short answer is no.

Based on discussions over at Meta (source: ask.discourse.com):

  • The new Rich Text Editor in Discourse is intentionally designed as a WYSIWYG experience and does not display a live preview pane on the right, unlike the classic Markdown editor. All formatting is rendered directly within the editor as you type, making an external preview unnecessary.
  • There is currently no site setting or configuration to enable a separate preview pane when using the rich text mode. This behavior is “working as intended” and has been confirmed by staff and community discussions
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Ah, I see WYSIWYG

After using Markdown for the last year, I’d completely forgotten about WYSIWYG

Thank you

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One thing I really like about the recent Discourse update is the improvement in the rich text editor toolbar accessibility.

Previously, when using a screen reader like NVDA, the formatting buttons (Bold, Italic, bullet lists, etc.) were all announced simply as “button”, without telling you what they did. This made navigation and editing harder for screen reader users.

After the update, those buttons are now properly labeled and classified, so NVDA can recognize and announce their function correctly, which makes composing posts much easier for people using assistive technology.

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Excellent, I am really pleased to hear this.

The teams at Meta actively work to improve accessibility, so if you are interested in learning more or contributing by reporting issues, go here:
https://meta.discourse.org/tag/accessibility

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Personally I’m very happy it is no longer hijacking the browser’s Ctrl+F and instead uses a separate shortcut!

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This was the main reason behind the change actually.

But we have a good alternative :slight_smile:

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