A Linear Board?

POSTED BY: Haken
UPDATED: Wednesday, June 5, 2002 23:06
VIEWED: 7830
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J

Tuesday, June 4, 2002 2:00 PM

Yeah, I'm getting kind of weird effects. I dropped by earlier today and screwed it up - I saw a list of new posts in one thread and nothing new anywhere else. So I thought I might have goofed up somehow and came back and now I'm seeing ALL messages in the thread. Which is actually cool. If "Latest Posts" showed all the posts on a thread you could just relabel it "Thread Index" and that much of it would be just like a threaded board, as long as the visited links changed color. There's an extra kind of hack on that in that forum titles might change back to an unvisited color once a new message was added. That way if it looked visited, you'd know nothing was new and if it had changed back to unvisited, you'd know to go find new messages. But what you did's really cool. I think this board could end up being more popular than the official one. *pats on the back for Haken*

I sympathize with you, Tieka - I've got a slow connection, too. I like the graphics and all so I leave them on but the one problem with vBulletin boards is they can be SO graphics/function heavy I do have to disable some stuff. - Oh, Tieka -are you a Buffy/Angel fan? My main board sounds like it would be pretty good for you - very slow-connection friendly.

And Shuggie, it sounds like you've got it. It is a lot of clicking, but I don't even notice that because the pages load right up, so I'm just reading or typing and hardly even notice the clicking. It's really easy to keep up with stuff. But it definitely isn't for everybody. Matter of taste - some people are big linear fans, some threaded, some sort of mixed. Actually, as content is all the same, I wonder if it wouldn't be possible to code all three views into the same posting board. Like inside this mixed view, Haken's almost got a pure threaded, too, with the New Posts part. I wonder if you couldn't code like a top layer that was a big blog linear sort of thing, then an inside layer of the mixed view, with the table of the thread view. That'd make one board the ideal board for everybody.

- Um - that smilie's supposed to be a wink. I'm seeing something else. I have all kinds of smilie problems everywhere I go. I'm gonna download Mozilla 1.0 when it comes out or something. My IE 6 plays all kinds of tricks on me.

SHUGGIE

Tuesday, June 4, 2002 3:19 PM

I wasn't really expressing a preference - I was trying to find out what you meant about a 'purely threaded board'.

I don't use web forums much - I use usenet a lot though.

What I like/would want is a way of seeing 'what's new since I was last here'. Maybe a way of tracking certain threads I'm interested in. I'm thinking out loud here - so don't go off and put a lot of work into something Haken - unless it's what you want to do anyway.

Probably the only thing I do know for sure - is that I'm not that keen on weblog-linear type boards.

Shug

Her lips were saying 'No' but then I looked into her eyes
... and her eyes were saying 'read my lips'
- Niles Crane

HAKEN

Tuesday, June 4, 2002 8:26 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by J:
If "Latest Posts" showed all the posts on a thread you could just relabel it "Thread Index" and that much of it would be just like a threaded board, as long as the visited links changed color.

So you're saying that you would prefer to see the entire index and opposed to just the new posts?

Quote:
There's an extra kind of hack on that in that forum titles might change back to an unvisited color once a new message was added. That way if it looked visited, you'd know nothing was new and if it had changed back to unvisited, you'd know to go find new messages.

Hmmmm...that's possible, but I'll have to experiment a little with that one. Normally your browser keeps track of the visited links and sets the color accordingly depending on the stylesheet or HTML settings for visited link specified on this end.

I can't really reset your browser and tell it to use the unvisited color. I can, however, add a little something else, perhaps a little icon that'll tell you that there are new posts in the thread.

Quote:
I wonder if you couldn't code like a top layer that was a big blog linear sort of thing, then an inside layer of the mixed view, with the table of the thread view. That'd make one board the ideal board for everybody.

Actually, when I was doing the "Latest Post" thing, I started playing around with a linear view of the messages. Basically, instead of showing the posts for a single thread, I'll show you all the posts for all threads all at once. I can see why someone would want to have something like that.

It's similar to Tieka's "Outlook Today" idea, where she can see what new threads and replies were posted since she visited the site last. I'll play around with that idea for a little while and maybe have a beta up for you all to look at.

Quote:
- Um - that smilie's supposed to be a wink. I'm seeing something else. I have all kinds of smilie problems everywhere I go. I'm gonna download Mozilla 1.0 when it comes out or something. My IE 6 plays all kinds of tricks on me.

It's not the browser's fault, well, it is to a certain extent. The problem you're experiencing is due to the fact that this site and other sites that uses emoticons, uses the same filename for the each individual emoticon.

For example, on here the smile emoticon has the filename "smile.gif." If you went to another site and they have a different looking smile emoticon with the same filename of "smile.gif," your browser might cache that file and the next time you visit here, your browser will use the cached "smile.gif" instead of the one from this site.

The solution for this is to rename my emoticons so that they have their own unique filenames. I've been slowly doing that, adding "fly" to the filename so that "smile.gif" is now "smilefly.gif."

So don't go switching browser just yet. IE works well with this site because that is what I use. I have no idea what this site looks like with other browsers or whether things work right with them.

J

Tuesday, June 4, 2002 11:00 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Haken:
So you're saying that you would prefer to see the entire index and opposed to just the new posts?

Well, it wouldn't really make much difference but if everything was up and the links changed color I wouldn't have to worry about sessions, and maybe losing a connection in the middle of checking posts and losing what had been marked new. Making it browser-history dependent is more solid than session/cookie stuff. And by being able to see what I had visited, I'd know I wasn't missing anything. So it's a plus in my book, but not worth it if it's a huge pain to code.

Quote:
Hmmmm...that's possible, but I'll have to experiment a little with that one. Normally your browser keeps track of the visited links and sets the color accordingly depending on the stylesheet or HTML settings for visited link specified on this end.

I can't really reset your browser and tell it to use the unvisited color. I can, however, add a little something else, perhaps a little icon that'll tell you that there are new posts in the thread.

Yeah, the icon would work. I have no idea how to program the link to change back to unvisited but I think the principle has to do with appending a number to the forum "name" that works like a counter based on the messages, rather than with the browser itself. Like forum 5 has 50 messages in it, so my browsers reads it as forum?5.50 and when somebody posts a new message it becomes forum?5.51 and my browser thinks that's a new forum it hasn't visited yet. Something like that.

Quote:
Actually, when I was doing the "Latest Post" thing, I started playing around with a linear view of the messages. Basically, instead of showing the posts for a single thread, I'll show you all the posts for all threads all at once. I can see why someone would want to have something like that.

It's similar to Tieka's "Outlook Today" idea, where she can see what new threads and replies were posted since she visited the site last. I'll play around with that idea for a little while and maybe have a beta up for you all to look at.

Yeah, that sounds like it would make everybody happy. There's a big divide in the Bronzer community based on board preference. It'd be cool to have everybody talking to each other and just viewing it how they liked.

Quote:
It's not the browser's fault, well, it is to a certain extent. The problem you're experiencing is due to the fact that this site and other sites that uses emoticons, uses the same filename for the each individual emoticon.

For example, on here the smile emoticon has the filename "smile.gif." If you went to another site and they have a different looking smile emoticon with the same filename of "smile.gif," your browser might cache that file and the next time you visit here, your browser will use the cached "smile.gif" instead of the one from this site.

The solution for this is to rename my emoticons so that they have their own unique filenames. I've been slowly doing that, adding "fly" to the filename so that "smile.gif" is now "smilefly.gif."

So don't go switching browser just yet. IE works well with this site because that is what I use. I have no idea what this site looks like with other browsers or whether things work right with them.

Yeah, this does seem to be perfect for IE - if stylsheets are controlling the width, people using Netscape might have to scroll from side to side a little or something - I think Netscape has a smaller view window in most configurations and isn't very customizable anyway.

This doesn't have anything to do with you but if you don't mind me asking - at another site they've recently added some new smilies and I can't see them at all - I get the red-cross box like a busted link. But everybody else seems to be able to see them. I can't figure out what's wrong - that's not a substitution error - it's just nothing. What seems even weirder is that when I click on properties and paste the address in I get a 404 Page Not Found, but when somebody else hyperlinks me I c

KAMLEY

Wednesday, June 5, 2002 8:47 AM

Quote:
So don't go switching browser just yet. IE works well with this site because that is what I use. I have no idea what this site looks like with other browsers or whether things work right with them.

I've come here with both Netscape and the beta (I think) version of Mozilla- everything looks great and fits the windows fine. Keep up the good work!

-Kamley

TIEKA

Wednesday, June 5, 2002 2:06 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Haken:

Now that I can actually tell you what posts are new in each thread since you read it last, I can do most of the stuff you ask. In fact, I could probably stick all that info under the "MY FIREFLY" screen. You could say that it's sort of an "OUTLOOK TODAY" for this website. If there's a definate interest in this, I can create it.

I've had a chance to check out the new system and it is easier than before. It is a bit of a pain that the listing goes away if I refresh or go to another page. Perhaps you could list the last 5-10 posts, irregardless of when they were (similar to the list on the main page). Then on the "FIREFLY TODAY" listing, have all of the new messages since last visit.

Now for even more coding---what about the icon idea? An icon if the post is new, a different one if it is read, and another one if it is Important, News, ....etc. Then when I read the threads I want, I can use the new function that will make all threads read, or I can get a list of just the News posts

Okay, I know I'm asking for a lot more programming, but you keep offering to do it.

Seriously, I like what you've got so far, it is a lot better than the official board. I'll be really happy with the "FIREFLY TODAYy" inside "MY FIREFLY".

Tieka,
who thinks Haken needs a lot of

for all of his hard work.

Once you've been in Serenity, you never leave. You just learn to live there. --Zoe

HAKEN

Wednesday, June 5, 2002 11:06 PM

As a temporary solution, I've modified the LATEST POST thingy to display all new posts for the current day when there are no listing of posts since you last viewed the thread.

Let me know if this works for you all.

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