Idea Proposal for Simplifying Smilies

Kunena 3 has easy access to the smilies, but takes up a lot of space. K4 attempts to solve this by having a smiley toolbar button. The accessibility of the smilies of K4 should be improved. Right now it takes two hovers and a click just to see the smilie options followed by clicking the one you want to insert it and then having to close the modal. I have two methods for simplifying the process:

1. This is perhaps the easiest option to implement but is in my opinion not quite as good as option two. Make the smiley icon go straight to the modal window upon clicking it. As it stands, having a drop down hover doesn't add any value considering that there is only one option in it.

2. Make the smilies pop out on hover or click when using the smilies icon. Here's what it would look like:



It's also mobile friendly as seen here (I used real code for this rather than just drawing it):



Displaying it horizontally is also an option:



Modals are for sure a neat modern part of the web, however in this context it feels like a separation from content (the smilies vs the editor). When clicking the smilies they cannot see very well how the code is being placed in until they close the modal (due to the transparent layer). In addition to this it is faster to have it a drop down rather than a modal for many reasons. Aside from modal's psychologically changing how your perception of what you are viewing (distraction), you have to move the mouse more with a modal as well as having to do more clicks which also takes more time.

I do really appreciate the simplistic interface of K4, my goal is to have the look and functionality as simple as possible.

+1, modal is nice but question is does it add to user experience.

for the record, I still believe that this ( www.wysibb.com/demo/ ) is the way to go when it comes to state of the art bbcode editor :)

You have already autocomplete for smileys in normal post form and quick reply :

I know, which is a handy feature. However most people will still use the smiley icon for accessing the smilies. Nerds will be fine with the current method, however creating the greatest good for the greatest number of people is still more important. Even cutting out one step saves a lot of clicks per user.