Highlights -- Get rid of them or give me some way to get rid of them!

[_xyzzy_]

I read the "latest activity" in various categories, for example the Community Clubhouse latest activity.  Near the top of the page is a banner with the title Highlights in white letters against a grey background.  It's bad enough that contrasts with the overall text coloring and is eye attracting.  But now I see that with enough highlight titles, which we appear to have now, we have a revolving banner of titles repeatedly scrolling in from the right.  That's even more annoying and distracting, and hence this post.

So can an additional preference be added to suppress the highlights banner entirely (or a little carrot, "^", to collapse or expand it)?  Or at least freeze it?  I don't want to have to scroll up every time I refresh the page to hide it.  I haven't tried it yet but I may be forced to suppress the html frame which displays that banner (something easily done with Firefox and an Ad Block Plus filter - hopefully).

[davidbk · Accepted solution]

Hi @_xyzzy_,

There actually is an "x" to supress the highlight bar, all the way to the right of the bar:

However, I do see how, when there is content underneath it, the 'x' is more difficult to see (while still there):

I'll reach out to see if there is something that can be done to make that easier to see / use.

Thanks for the feedback!
Dave

[_xyzzy_]

Thanks.  It's weird but my Firefox doesn't show that x.  But I clicked in the general area of where it would be and sure enough the Highlights bar was removed. My FF is a bit flaky these days and I have a bunch of javascript and ad blockers which might be the reason I didn't see the x.  I tried Chrome for comparison and sure enough the x is there.

Of course this begs the question, how do you get them back after you have clicked the x?

[davidbk]

That's a good question. 🙂

I think the bar remains hidden for that session. So, it reappears when you begin a new session on the Forums - or at least that's how it seems to be working for me.

[_xyzzy_]

@davidbk:

It seems to reappear on each new page you open up.  If I am clicking on thread titles in a latest activity list each thread will show the Highlights.  So, using the x to suppress it on a per-page basis is not a good solution.  There needs to be an indicator to toggle the bar.  Maybe it could be to the right of the path bar above the highlights or alternatively somewhere in the black area at the top (possibly next to the "Ask a question").

Another scheme might be to still use the x where it is but it would just collapse the Highlights bar contents and the x got replaced with some other indicator to expand the bar to include the highlights contents.  And also the action would extend to all forum pages (i.e., the setting becomes an actual preference).

[davidbk]

Thanks for the suggestions, @_xyzzy_, I've passed these to our platform manager to review.

Thanks!
Dave