Find articles in feeds

Find articles in the feeds

Home is the article-discovery page: Your Feed lists articles from authors you follow, while Global Feed lists articles from the whole application. A tag narrows the list to one subject, and pagination lets you move through additional results without leaving the feed.

Before you start

Your Feed requires sign-in. Home starts an article request when the feed or page changes and loads the popular tags separately.

Prerequisites

• Be signed in before selecting Your Feed.
• Wait for the article list to finish loading before choosing an article or page number.
• Wait for the tags area to finish loading before choosing a tag.

If a following-feed request is made while you are signed out, Home sends you to /login.

Choose a feed

Use the feed tabs to decide which set of articles you want to browse. Your Feed opens the following feed at / with the feed=following query value. Global Feed opens the all-articles feed at /.

Prerequisites

• Be signed in before selecting Your Feed.

Steps

1. Choose the feed that answers your question.

   If you want to…	Select
   Read articles from authors you follow	Your Feed
   Read the application's all-articles list	Global Feed

2. Confirm that the selected feed's article list appears.

Result: Home displays the selected feed's article list.

Read the article list

An article preview identifies an article by its title and description, then gives you its author, creation date, tags, favorite control, and a link to the full article. The right side of Home contains Popular Tags; each returned tag is a link to that tag's article list.

When results have loaded, each preview can contain the following information:

The article list shows up to 10 articles for each request. Popular Tags also has its own loading state, separate from the article list.

Browse tags and more pages

Use a tag when you want to narrow article discovery to one subject, or use pagination when the current feed has more results than the first page.

Prerequisites

• Have a loaded article list with a returned tag or more than one page available.

Steps

1. Choose the result you want to open.

   If you want to…	Select
   Narrow the list by a popular tag	The returned tag text under Popular Tags
   Read an article	The article title or Read more...
   See another page in the current list	The required page number

2. Confirm that the selected tag list, article page, or article-list page appears.

Result: A tag selection opens the selected tag's article list, an article selection opens the selected article, or a page-number selection displays that page of the current article list. When you change pages, the current feed query is preserved; page 1 does not add a page query value.

Handle empty and loading results

Home displays a status message while it retrieves articles or tags, and it replaces the list with a different message when the selected result contains no articles.

Prerequisites

• Have the selected feed or tag list open.

Steps

1. Read the status message shown on the current Home surface.
2. For Loading articles..., follow the action in the matching decision-table row.
3. Confirm that the article list appears.
4. For Loading tags..., follow the action in the matching decision-table row.
5. Confirm that the tags area appears.
6. For Your feed is empty. Follow some users to see their articles here, or check out the Global Feed!, follow the action in the matching decision-table row.
7. For No articles are here... yet., follow the action in the matching decision-table row.
8. For No tags are here... yet., follow the action in the matching decision-table row.

Result: You can distinguish a list that is still loading from a list that has finished with no articles or no tags.

When a result is not available

Use the message on the page to choose the next action. The Home page is a browsing surface: it does not provide data-entry fields for creating or editing an article.

Prerequisites

• Have one of the messages below visible.

Steps

1. Read the message and locate its matching row in the decision table.
2. For Your feed is empty. Follow some users to see their articles here, or check out the Global Feed!, follow the action in the matching decision-table row.
3. For No articles are here... yet., follow the action in the matching decision-table row.
4. For Loading articles..., follow the action in the matching decision-table row.
5. Confirm that the article list appears.
6. For Loading tags..., follow the action in the matching decision-table row.
7. Confirm that the tags area appears.

Result: The message tells you whether to choose another list, continue waiting, or continue with the available feed and article surfaces.

Continue from an article or tag

After you choose an article or tag, continue on the page for that destination rather than trying to complete that task from Home.

Steps

1. Select the article title or Read more... to open the article page.
2. Select a returned tag under Popular Tags to open its tag list.

Result: You are on the selected article page or the selected tag's article list.