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Comment by britta | Hacker News Reader

I moderate a midsize subreddit where many of the 35k daily readers use Alien Blue, and this is a bit of a headache because Alien Blue makes it hard to find the subreddit sidebar, where we list important FAQs and rules. Our sticky post is dedicated to explaining how to find the sidebar in Alien Blue (http://www.reddit.com/r/jailbreak/comments/2ic349/how_to_see...).

I actually installed a bunch of other iOS Reddit apps to see if I could find one that supported sidebars better, so that I could officially recommend that app to my subreddit instead. The other ones didn't support sidebars at all though!

What I want most is for Alien Blue's tiny arrow buttons that lead to subreddit sidebars - http://i.imgur.com/ygWOV91.png - to be detail disclosure buttons instead, with a tiny "i" (https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/userex...). I believe that icon makes more sense and will help readers realize they should tap there for sidebar information.

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I'm an intermediate level user of reddit. I use the "reddit is fun" app on android. It took me a long time to discover that the i in a circle at the top of the screen will bring up the sidebar content.

I have a suggestion, though I'm not sure it is a good one: If the sidebar contains a certain number of links, or length of text, and the user hasn't opened it on their mobile app yet, then the app can highlight the button with flashing or a color to recommend that a user reads it.

I find that there are many subreddits where if you start reading posts without the sidebar you are really missing out.

> It took me a long time to discover that the i in a circle at the top of the screen will bring up the sidebar content.

Thanks! I never knew.

But I also only use it to read some random entertaining thread as I get ready to go to bed.

I've mostly ignored the sidebar for almost the entire time I've used reddit. I don't find it to be the case that it affects the experience very often.

To your point: I didn't even know you could pull up the sidebar content on Alien Blue.

You can also view the sidebar by clicking on the blue dot in the top-right corner while browsing the subreddit.

I don't see it. I have message, settings, new post and gallery

you can scroll that view sort of horizontally

You are a genius. I am an idiot. Thanks

Alien Blue is simply the best, there is no replacement for it (so far). I was able to find sidebar rather quickly, when I wanted to look at it. Maybe most of your visitors just doesn't care enough about a sidebar? :-) (Also, such an arrow would be confusing imho, because it would suggest it is for entering the subreddit. Sidebar is reachable from the context menu, and that is sufficient.)

They probably don't care enough about a sidebar because they don't know about it or it doesn't come to mind. How many users are going to go to a subreddit and think "I really need to go check out the sidebar!"? Most of the time it's there to try and improve the posting quality. If using a mobile app is a user's primary method of viewing reddit, how would the sidebar even enter their minds?

The sidebar being reachable from the context menu is nowhere near sufficient, and since this is now an official reddit app, they should care enough to promote a feature that improves the quality of reddit.

One solution would be to show the 'sidebar' at the top of whichever reddit you're browsing. Of course, considering the size of some sidebars, this might necessitate a 'sidebar' targeted specifically at Alien Blue users (which is now quite feasibly, I suppose).

Better yet, have something that looks like this at the top of the subreddit view:

[ Sidebar > ]

When the user clicks it, Alien Blue would show the sidebar. The sidebar view would have this at the top to make it easy to return to the post view:

[ < Posts ]

It's a cultural thing. You shame them by saying hey low content poster, you should consult the sidebar more often. Sidebar. Sidebar. Sidebar. BOOK DEPOSITORY.

And then hopefully people will get it through their skulls. The sidebar is where useful content is.

Of course this will not affect drive by users and people who have no desire to improve themselves.

diode for android does everyhing AB does. hyperbole.

I go through this regularly and wish there were a real solution; I mod a subreddit with >100k subscribers, and we also have subreddit rules link, ongoing consolidated threads, etc. in our sidebar and get the "but I'm on MOBILE! How was I supposed to KNOW that was against the rules" defense all the time.

"But I'm on mobile" should count as an offense; it's not an excuse.

Make that part of the subreddit's culture.

As a user, I also find it cumbersome to pull out the sidebar. I wish there was a setting to at least show it once when coming to a subreddit that I never visited before [0]

Aside from the rules and expected behavior, some subreddit just don't make any sense without prior knowledge of what they are about.

[0] "never visited" could be tough to implement, perhaps instead "not part of the last 1000 non subscribed subreddit visited", or something like that.

+1 I believe this is a pain point across all platforms, not just iOS. Shockingly, I've had trouble bringing up the sidebar on tablet versions as well.

Have you tried Reddit News [1] ? It has a very large button at the bottom of the screen that says "Sidebar" which will show you the subreddit sidebar.

1. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=reddit.news

Maybe when a subreddit is first loaded in Alien Blue, before any links have been clicked, the sidebar could show up as the third panel on the right. It wouldn't fully fit on an iPad screen, but you'd see part of it and be able to slide to the right to view it all. Then when you opened a link, it would replace the sidebar as the third pane.

You can pull up the sidebar in Redditor (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/redditor-perfect-client-for/...). It's my iOS Reddit app of choice since iOS 7 launched.

Interesting, that's not too terrible for sidebar access, but that choice of featured screenshot means I can't officially recommend it. It doesn't matter as much now though; with Reddit's endorsement, Alien Blue is the app we have to support.

Reddit is Fun supports the sidebar as well. I suspect your problem is user apathy not lack of sidebar support.

As an iOS-related subreddit, we have few readers using Android devices. There are of course people who don't read the sidebar even when it's very visible (such as in the standard website view), but we also had a real pattern of people saying "Sorry, I didn't see that part of the FAQ/rules, I'm using Alien Blue." (This is better now that Reddit added the sticky feature and we put up an Alien Blue info sticky.)

I haven't played with it but I know you can sticky a self-post as a mod. What about putting your sidebar content up as a sticky self-post if it is that important to your sub?

Might be annoying to see for some but it'll be very visible for Alien Blue users.

Wouldn't be any more annoying than the sticky post that's already there for alien blue users. I agree, just put the sidebar content in the sticky...

A sticky can only be updated by the original poster, while a sidebar can be updated by all of the moderators. For sidebars there's even a diff log so that all of the moderators can understand how it's been updated. Most subreddits have multiple moderators, so putting the sidebar in the sticky isn't practical.

Amrc also supports display of the sidebar. Swipe from right to left and there it is, 4th item under the Subreddit section.

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