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Forte Interface — Feature Roadmap

Consolidated backlog of what's still missing, deliberately excluded, or rough around the edges in Forte, based on a gap analysis against the classic UI's full route table (src/ForumRewrite/Application.php) and every prior Forte planning doc in docs/plans/. This is a menu to pull from, not a plan — each item below still needs its own pass through the FDP steps when picked up.

Flagged first: not just a UI gap

✅ Done — see forte_identity_signing_step4_implementation_summary.md (board view only; single-thread view left as-is, pending its own deprecation — now also ✅ done, see forte_deprecate_single_thread_view_step4_implementation_summary.md).

Forte replies post as anonymous "guest," always. reply_form.php's author_identity_id field is reused as-is in Forte, but Forte never loads the browser-key signing script (browser_signing.*.js) that populates it elsewhere. This isn't a missing nice-to-have — it's a silent authorship downgrade: a reader with an approved, signed identity everywhere else on the site becomes anonymous the moment they reply from Forte. Worth prioritizing ahead of purely additive features below.

A. Missing capabilities (candidate features)

  • Compose a new thread. ✅ Done (board view — the only Forte view left after forte_deprecate_single_thread_view). See forte_compose_thread_step4_implementation_summary.md. The toolbar's "New" button exists in both Forte views but is permanently disabled, wired to nothing. Classic uses a separate canonical form (thread_compose_form.php, distinct from the reply_form.php Forte already reuses) — porting this means adopting a second shared form, not extending the existing one.

  • Signed identity / browser-key authorship. ✅ Done (board view). See flagged item above. Classic's /account/key page and browser_signing.js would need a Forte-appropriate entry point.

  • Reactions & moderation. ✅ Like/Flag done (board view — thread-level Like, post-level Flag on root posts and replies; reply-level Like deliberately deferred, see forte_reactions_step4_implementation_summary.md). Agent-reply requests, Codex handoff workflow, user-approval flow — none of this exists in Forte today.

  • Discovery pages. /activity/ (recent activity feed) and /tags/ (a browsable tag index with shareable per-tag URLs, distinct from the board's filter-only folder tree) have no Forte equivalent. Note: classic itself has no full-text search either, so search isn't a "parity" gap — nothing to match there.

  • Profiles & permalinks. ✅ Done. Single-post permalink (see forte_post_permalink_step4_implementation_summary.md) — every post/reply on the board has a shareable "#" link. Profile pages, user directory, and author-name links (see forte_profiles_step4_implementation_summary.md) — /forte/profiles/{slug}, /forte/user/{username}, /forte/users/, plus a quick-glance summary dialog on author-name click.

  • A way back to the rest of the site. There is currently no link from Forte to any classic page, and no link from classic pages into Forte-adjacent destinations (about, tools, downloads). This directly conflicts with an explicit non-goal from the original design (see below) — don't add this without a deliberate decision to reverse that choice.

B. Deliberate non-goals from prior planning — don't "fix" these by accident

These were intentional scope calls, not oversights. Still active unless noted otherwise:

  • No navigation between Forte and classic pages, either direction — forte_step2_feature_description.md. Still true today; directly relevant to the "way back to the rest of the site" item above.

  • No read/unread state — called out as explicitly out of scope in both forte_step1_solution_assessment.md and forte_step2_feature_description.md.

  • No custom keyboard shortcuts beyond basic pane selection, and no keyboard-driven expand/collapse of nested replies — forte_step1_solution_assessment.md / forte_keyboard_navigation_step2_feature_description.md. The single-thread list pane's collapse toggle is still mouse-only. (The board-view half of this is now moot — forte_board_reply_tree made board replies always-expanded, no collapse state left. The single-thread half is now moot too — forte_deprecate_single_thread_view removed that pane entirely.)

  • Desktop-first; mobile/narrow-viewport not an engineered target — forte_step2_feature_description.md and forte_board_view_step2_feature_description.md both call this a pragmatic, not engineered, decision.

  • "No reply/compose affordances, no Permalink links" — forte_step2_feature_description.md's original read-only framing. The reply half is superseded (forte_reply/forte_board_reply shipped it); the permalink half was never revisited and is still absent — see the permalink item above.

C. Known rough edges (debt, not new features)

  • New/Refresh toolbar buttons are permanently disabled dead UI in both Forte views, indefinitely. (✅ New resolved by forte_compose_thread — board view only, the only view left. Refresh still has no clear job.)

  • No empty-state messaging — a tag filter matching zero threads (or a thread with zero visible posts) renders nothing, no "no results" text. Neither paned_board_thread_list.php nor paned_list_pane.php (✅ paned_list_pane.php removed by forte_deprecate_single_thread_view — this item is now board-view-only) has an empty-array branch.

  • No error handling in the composer JS path — after forte_board_reply_tree removed the old lazy-fetch's .catch(), there's no error-surfacing left anywhere in paned_reader.js/paned_board_reader.js. A failed reply submission silently redirects to the classic compose-error page (a known, accepted limitation from forte_reply Stage 5). (✅ paned_reader.js removed by forte_deprecate_single_thread_view — this item is now paned_board_reader.js-only.)

  • Narrow-viewport column squeeze — forte_step4_implementation_summary.md itself flags the Subject column getting "quite narrow" at 420px against fixed-width From/Date columns. Known, unresolved.

  • Uneven accessibility — folder tree and list rows have real role/aria-selected/roving-tabindex support, but there's no aria-live region anywhere, so screen-reader users get no announcement when a reply posts, a highlight applies, or a filter changes the result count.

  • Dead code: TemplateRenderer::renderFragment() has had its only caller removed (forte_board_reply_tree) and was deliberately left in place pending a cleanup decision. (✅ No longer dead — the Application.php decomposition (codebase_cleanup_audit_plan_v1.md) gave it 16 live call sites across RouteServices.php, ForteContentAndUserDetailApiController.php, and ForteActivityController.php. This item is resolved by circumstance, not cleanup.)

  • No permalink/anchor support on load — Forte's own post-reply redirect generates a #post-{id} hash, but paned_reader.js never reads it on page load (only the created_post_id query param, present solely right after a fresh submission). A plain shared link like /threads/{id}/forte#post-{id} from anywhere else won't auto-select that post. (✅ Moot — paned_reader.js and the /threads/{id}/forte route no longer exist after forte_deprecate_single_thread_view; any future permalink work targets the board view only, see forte_post_permalink in forte_fdp_cycles.md.)

  • Board Prev/Next toolbar buttons didn't scroll the selected row into view. ✅ Done. Stepping past the visible list left the new selection scrolled off-screen with no indication anything had moved — paned_board_reader.js's stepSelection() updated selection state but never scrolled, unlike the Activity view's own stepSelection(), which already called scrollIntoView(). Fixed by mirroring that: board's stepSelection() now calls scrollIntoView({ block: "nearest" }) on the newly selected row (small fix, handled directly from todo.txt rather than a full FDP pass).

Suggested sequencing

  1. Signed authorship — a real correctness gap, not a feature request; likely worth doing before anything else here. ✅ Done (board view).

1a. Deprecate the single-thread Forte reader — ✅ Done, see forte_deprecate_single_thread_view_step4_implementation_summary.md.

  1. Nav back to classic / "way back to the rest of the site" — needs a conscious decision first (it reverses a stated non-goal), not just an implementation pass.

  2. Everything else in Section A is additive and can be sequenced by whatever the user values most; each should still go through Step 1 (recommended, given real trade-offs exist for most of these) → 2 → 3 → 4 like every other Forte feature so far.