I can confirm that these were upstream changes in the newest version of Discourse.
The changes in the sidebar/hamburger menu cleared some of the duplicated links to the "Latest", "New", "Top" etc. sections in the community view, while giving space for helpful new links like "My Posts" and your message inboxes. You can still get quick access to the community sections from the secondary nav on the homepage (see screenshot below), which you can get to by clicking the "Zorin Forum" link in the left hand side of the main nav. The same amount of clicks as before.
However, if you still wish to have quick access to "New" threads from the new sidebar/hamburger menu, you can change the "Community > Everything" item (highlighted in the screenshot below) to link directly there on a pre-user basis.
To do so, open your Profile > Preferences and go to the "Sidebar" tab. Under the "Navigation" section, open the "When there's new content in the sidebar..." drop-down menu and select the "link to unread/new and show a count of new items" option before clicking "Save Changes".
This is the "Other notifications" section where you can view just the pings about newly-earned badges, marked solutions, other people's posts that link to your own posts, and other lower-priority notifications.
I think it would have been nicer to offer a choice ..... the old one for computers and the new one for cell phones as they complain that the hamburger menu was to small to see and suspect it was the same with smaller computer screens .... I suppose the new layout will work quite well for those with touch screens ....
But it is what it is and we all have a choice to make when using this new lay-out ..... I've made mine ,,,,,
This is A Discourse Update - so the best course of action may be to contact the Discourse Devs to air the grievances - they may be able to offer a choice in settings.
Thanks Aravisian but it has been my experience in the past that once the developers make a change they never go back .... they call it "all in the name of progress" and who would want to buck progress .....
If you do you are branded an ol' fuddy-duddy or naysayer ...... some people hate to be categorized ...... me .... I could care less what I'm called .....
I've noticed that when your near the bottom of a post & add a smiley face, the list of available emoji's disappears down below the screen line.
For a quick test , open a reply then line it to the bottom with anything.
a
a
a
a
a
a
now try a emoji.
i use the " : " to make it faster ,, Yes if you click the smiley face icon it's up high with it's search input.
: ,,,,, the lower you get it then disappears ....
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ok another BUG... i had 2 alerts on my avatar,, one a "like" & the other a "reply" ,,, when i click the "like" today (It was ok yesterday & prior to site update it would open to the post),,, today it open my profile liked list ??????
Note: I didnt click the heart in the dropdown on the right
The emoji picker seems to work fine for me, it appears correctly even when I type : at the bottom of the text area.
As for the profile dropdown, all the notifications also appear to be working correctly. Only when I first filter by clicking on one of the right hand side icons, the notifications will redirect to my profile instead of the corresponding post.
TIL you can use J and K keys to navigate up and down the entire thread à la vim. Was this always possible or is it new?
That seems to be working fine for me as well, perhaps something else is messing with the view? It may be worth checking with Discourse if there are other people reporting the same issue.
Found another BUG , new next arrows are on posts with multi photo's, when i click for the next photo, it will not let me enlarge the next photo, i have to close it & view one at a time.
When i have my browser zoomed to more than 110%, in the reply box i hit " : " for emoji's it now drops down below the screen , it works normal if i click the emoji icon..
Second, with a post that has multi photo's, there are now arrows to goto next photo, But i can not enlarge the photo, i have to close & individually open each photo so i can enlarge it.
I think they probably understood that everyone in the Zorin community is having this issue, and referred you back to the here. Try opening a new thread on their own forums directly, maybe someone else has the same issues.
Sounds like the ol' run around to me ..... when you get tired of chasing your tail you will be quiet and they will slap each other on the back .... job well done .....