Muhammad just had a cool idea at General Feedback that I thought I would pick up and bring to the Feature Wishlist:
Instead of making it link to the showthreaded, that can be really big, make the pop-up small and with just one post.
Maybe, at most, have a <<Previous Next>> button. This would mean another script to be linked to, that would just show one message at a time in a smaller window. Close button? Mateo Byler <A HREF="http://crucedecaminos.com" target="_new">CruceDeCaminos.com</A>
I don't really understand the need to open a new window at all. Couldn't we just add anchors to each message in showflat and have the link point to that? Then you'd just be scrolling up/down the same page to the replied message.
I use 25 or something... just loads faster and most threads are under 25. But when they aren't, that would be trouble to just link up the page...
Muhammad Chishti Creative dIRECTOR <font color=white><A HREF="http://www.imcuniverse.com" target="_new">http://www.imcuniverse.com</A></font color=white>
Mateo, this should be very simple to do... although I haven't started to fool with 5.1 yet - want to wait for the bug fixes and the public release to be non-beta (works every time). So if Scream doesn't do it I probably will after a while... with some help, though. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="images/icons/wink.gif" />
Muhammad Chishti Creative dIRECTOR <font color=white><A HREF="http://www.imcuniverse.com" target="_new">http://www.imcuniverse.com</A></font color=white>
I really like that idea... what I ended up doing on mine (so I can get this thing soft launched this weekend) is to use the post numbers. If the reply number is on this page, I link to it. If the reply is on a previous page, then I don't link to it at all because it is impossible to figure out without adding a sql query and calculating the preferences, etc... If you wanted to make an assumption that most threads don't go over two pages, it would probably be pretty easy to figure out if you are on page 2, and if you are then just link back to page 1, that would cover a bunch more of the situations, leaving only three page or longer threads not covered. Doing a popup should be really just using a little javascript with a new perl script to display just the basic post info.
And on a slightly related topic, I'd be interested in seeing how "normal" people view posts. We sometimes lose track as developers of what the world is really like. So for anyone who runs a non-technical forum, if you could, take a look at your server reports and see which script gets hit more, flat or threaded, and tell us what your default setting is, since I'm guessing most people don't ever change from that and give us an idea if you can of how many topics you have and how many posts you have (so we can see an average number of posts/topic). I realize that threaded will get hit over and over again, whereas flat doesn't, but I'd be curious to see if we can figure out what users really prefer.
Agreed...except that you should look at the profile settings, rather than the page hits, seeing as how showthreaded is highly ineffiecient and requires many clicks to the same script to read the same number of posts as showflat does in one click! <img border="0" title="" alt="[Smile]" src="images/icons/smile.gif" />
<font color=blue>Doing a popup should be really just using a little javascript with a new perl script to display just the basic post info.</font color=blue>
Excatly!
<font color=blue>curious to see if we can figure out what users really prefer.</font color=blue>
I'll check our back logs and see which gets hit more... if it reported the scripts and not just pages. I think it did report scripts. Will report later or tomorrow if I have something.
Muhammad Chishti Creative dIRECTOR <font color=white><A HREF="http://www.imcuniverse.com" target="_new">http://www.imcuniverse.com</A></font color=white>
I just checked our DB (don't look at the script hits! it's inaccurate!) and the overwhelming majority use flat. I'd say at least 98%. Of course, flat is our default.
Muhammad Chishti Creative dIRECTOR <font color=white><A HREF="http://www.imcuniverse.com" target="_new">http://www.imcuniverse.com</A></font color=white>
I don't think I'd want to bother my users with that question, plus it would probably be on a board that most would never visit anyways - I'm up to 499 forums right now in one installation <img border="0" title="" alt="[Smile]" src="images/icons/smile.gif" /> As for the poll, this is one area of this program I guess I'm a little disappointed in. It's not at all user friendly to add one and the fact that you can even add a poll to your post is pretty well hidden in the faq... I've completely dumped all the poll code and rewrote my own because I think on a sports site like mine it will get a great deal of use. Should the coach be fired, is this player a jerk, Did OJ do it? It's handled a little different, but much much friendlier to add a poll, there's even a button to add a poll right next to the button to add a post. I haven't added the functionality to include it in a reply yet (it's not going to be that hard, I just need to find the time) and I only track the last IP voted (although I'll probably change it to last 10 - I'm not sure I want to bother tracking every vote's IP, you really just need to catch the person who tries to vote over and over again continuously), but it seems to be working okay so far... And when you click on show results, it gives you the same exact page you are on, except with the poll results instead of the poll question, so you can continue on your merry way. A lot of my code and logic comes from a multi-user poll program that I have for my site so polls can be placed on just about any page with up to three questions in each poll, all run by one program.
