Expecting a better Friends widget for the future

[danbp]

The Friends widget looks very similar to the Members widget. The actual displayed information (newest | active | popular) are not the best IMO for many case.

The first thing i would to know about my friends is if they are online. The active tab could be the right place, but it is not. It gives the activity history. Who really matters if his friend was active 5 mn ago ? This info is on the SWA anyway. He would probably be more satisfied to know he's friend is online or not now ! Even if that info is eventually crossed with the Who's online widget. But as the friend widget is only displayed on profiles, so we have this direct related information centered in the widget.

The popularity of my friends is a very basic information, but this detail is on the friends list of my friend's profile, if i absolutely want to know that. All profile details can eventually be reached by activating the linked title of the widget.

The newest friends is a reminder list, that's ok, but the secondary info about his registration is not pertinent here. If he's my newest friend i probably better want to now, as a reminder, since when we are in relationship and not since when my new friend is registered.
The secondary information since 1 hour, or 1 day or 6 mounth or event 2 years and so on is verbose. It's enough, as reminder, to know the mounth and the year and eventually since today. So todday, asside the friendship notice, became also a short reminder. Over the time for this inofmation, a vague timeline is enough i guess.

Another point who would be fine, is to get eventually this widget all over the site and not only on the profile page.

My demand goes for a better handling of this widget sitewide, with better informations to all members, not only for the profile.
I suggest another head menu, firstly to differanciate from the Members widget and secondly, to be more explicit to what this widget provides. Perhaps adding some more option to the widget can let owners decide how and what to show precisely in this widget ?

Relationship: this is a personnal information for each profile. The date is mounth/year and today

Membership: this is a general information to anybody, the registering date (not time) of the mentionned users.

Online: personnal and general information (visual only, there is no need to additional information such as date/time). And if this tab is set by default, the profile link should be linked to the private message tab, instead of the profile homepage.

Of course all this could be done by a extra plugin, but i consider that BP is enough evoluted to offer some better community handling on its own for now. Thank you for your attention. :-)

See attached picture to understand what i mean.

[danbp]

actual and suggested enhancement for the friends widget

[boonebgorges]

Thanks for the analysis and suggestions, danbp. I agree on almost your points. The current Friends widget is a bit confused.

I think we could make it even simpler than what you've suggested:

[avatar] ralph
         friends since july 2013
         active right now

[avatar] Daniel
         friends since july 2014
         active 20 minutes ago

This would always be sorted in order of most recently active, and we'd do away with the AJAX filters.

Regarding "online now": We don't have a very reliable way of determining this at the moment. The Who's Online widget just queries for users who have been active in the last 5 minutes.

It's also worth noting that currently the Friends widget displays the friends of the *displayed* user. In retrospect, it might make more sense to show the friends (if any) of the *logged-in* user. That seems like it would be of more general use.

[DJPaul]

We're closing this ticket because it has not received any contribution or comments for at least two years. We have decided that it is better to close tickets that are good ideas, which have not gotten (or are unlikely to get) contributions, rather than keep things open indefinitely. This will help us share a more realistic roadmap for BuddyPress with you.

Everyone very much appreciates the time and effort that you spent sharing your idea with us. On behalf of the entire BuddyPress team, thank you.

If you feel strongly that this enhancement should still be added to BuddyPress, and you are able to contribute effort towards it, we encourage you to re-open the ticket, or start a discussion about it in our Slack channel. Please consider that time has proven that good ideas without contributions do not get built.

For more information, see ​https://bpdevel.wordpress.com/2018/01/21/our-awaiting-contributions-milestone-contains/
or find us on Slack, in the #buddypress channel: ​https://make.wordpress.org/chat/