Is it possible to display serial number before the subjects and the icon ?

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by one_soul on 10/15/00 08:33 PM.</EM></FONT>

If you refer to message numbers, I'd like to see that also. I like the display of the sender's name of the message a response is to, but the message number in addition would be great.

-M.

That's not too difficult, I'm doing it on the one I'm setting up.. go to where it prints the subject in showflat and showthreaded, then add something like this..
( Post#: $Number / re: $Parent )
I believe both variables are pulled in with the query, but I can't remember... I didn't give you line numbers in the code to go to because my code is so far off now it probably wouldn't even come close to matching. Make sure to look for it in both top and side post formats... Also, I have 5.0.8, so I can't vouch for anything higher than that.

¿huh? What for? Not very user friendly... I can see you might see some use to it, but your users just might go "what? What is that number for? Just takes space...".


Mateo Byler
CruceDeCaminos.com - <A HREF="http://crucedecaminos.com" target="_new">http://crucedecaminos.com</A>

Unless there was a global "jump to message number" search box, I agree that it would take up space without a really useful function... (hmm wasn't I just crying about losing the post numbers like 4 days ago? )

Muhammad Chishti
Creative dIRECTOR
<font color=white><A HREF="http://www.imcuniverse.com" target="_new">http://www.imcuniverse.com</A></font color=white>

... and didn't we alll hate them when we had them.

Well, what for ... the message numbers are useful in long threads (in flat mode) where a small group of people contribute. In threaded mode it is easy to see to which message someone responds, but in flat mode it is impossible if the only information provided is a name. My W3T forums are not very old yet, but the community using them now is a few years old -- we have threads that go over 60 default pages (sigh, this is in only three days) ... most of those users prefer flat mode, and they asked about the missing message numbers.

I'd be happy if this was made an option. If you don't need it for your boards, you won't have to use it -- but there are communities that would benefit from it (personally I find message numbers more useful than the new user list, but it's all about preference).

-M.

You have threads with 600 posts to them? Wow!
Sounds like you need all the help you can get reading that in flat mode.

What happens when, on the latest page of the thread you read post #67439 re: #58294 and #58294 happens to be 40 pages ahead? You click around on previous pages looking for it?

Darren.
<A HREF="http://www.bullpen.com.au" target="_new">http://www.bullpen.com.au</A>

Heh, yes, that particular thread is <A HREF="http://www.vcommunities.net/cgi-bin/wwwthreads/showflat.pl?Cat=&Board=vzconnections&Number=271&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5" target="_new">here</A>. These people are chat boxes ... they almost use some of these threads like "real time chat", meaning they refresh every few minutes and add comments to it. (Each to their own!) So they normally do not have to go back to the first few pages.

I feel message numbers would help in other situations too -- but like I said, it is really only useful in flat mode, I can't think of a useful purpose in threaded mode.

-M.

As I mentioned earlier, I use these and link the parent post number back to the parent post, which doesn't work right now if the posts spread over multiple pages... I think I have an idea on how to make it work so that you can jump to that post, but I'm not 100% sure.. And it might be cool to add in the name too. The user can expand the number of posts to show per page so that it would generally always work, but obviously that slows down the page loading. I'm hoping to look at this in the next couple of days. I think they are very useful in flat mode, if you can use them in this manner... I'll keep you posted if I get it working, I just need to get my forums soft launched with a small mailing list I have to get some feedback from visitors before I make them live..