Headlines is the default category even when it has no content

Hi,
Currently the departments always display, even when they contain no news results, as you point out.

The structure of departments is the structure of user navigation through the News scope. So hiding empty departments would introduce uncertainty in the user experience I think.

Maybe a good way to address an empty department is to provide a result that says something like:
"No results!. Try enabling content in settings". (Instead of hiding the department entirely.)

I agree the empty departments should still be available for selecting. Also, showing a message sounds like a good idea.

What I meant in the description was not hiding empty departments, but pre-selecting one that is not empty.
So in the described scenario, instead of Headlines, the preselected department would be Technology. And of course, user would still be able to switch to Headlines. In this case, he would see the "No results" message.

Or maybe it would be simpler to just remember what department was selected by the user. This way, I would still see "Technology" instead of "Headlines" even after reboot.

Hi Cos,

The order of the departments is a part of the user navigation experience. Changing that order would make the scope unpredictable and a little bit more difficult to use.

Therefore, I prefer the approach of showing a helpful message when a department has no news results.

Hi Kyle,

I didn't suggest changing the order. I also think it wouldn't be a good idea.

The message would be great.

But how about saving the state, so that next time the scope starts, it shows the department that was last active?

Oh OK.

While that is possible, I am not sure it is desirable. For example, most people will have a non-empty Headlines department. My guess is most people want to see headlines (generic news) usually.

Just because they happened to check, for example, Finance news the last time the had the scope open does not necessarily mean they want to check it next time they look at News.