Forum Update

I made a silent update to the forum this weekend with some minor but helpful changes:

- Improved tracking of read threads. As with before, when you click Latest Posts from the main forum page, you will be taken to the Recent Threads page. A new button has been added near the top of this page which lets you mark everything as read (all threads in all forums). If you're a big follower of the forums, I recommend that you mark everything as read when you get a chance, because from that point forward new threads (and existing threads with new posts) will appear in bold at the top of this list, and threads with no new posts will appear lower on the list. Note that only registered members who are logged in can take advantage of thread tracking.

- Threads which have new posts (to you) now also show up in bold in the Latest Posts section near the top of the main forum page.

- Improved visibility of hyperlinks within posts.

- Collapsible topic groups. If you have JavaScript enabled, you will notice an arrow located on the far right of each topic group on the main forum page. Click it to toggle whether the group is visible or not. These settings are saved in a cookie, so every time you view the main forum page, it will remember which topic groups you have hidden until the next time you toss your cookies.

Please post here or PM me if you encounter any strange behavior.

I like the bolding of the unread threads a lot, and the hyperlinks feature is nice too. I noticed that I was no longer automatically logging in, which may have meant that my cookies crumbled. I can still log in manually though.

Quote: mkl654321

I like the bolding of the unread threads a lot, and the hyperlinks feature is nice too. I noticed that I was no longer automatically logging in, which may have meant that my cookies crumbled. I can still log in manually though.

That's actually something else that was changed with this update (thanks for reminding me). It wasn't that your cookies were lost; it was that there was a 30-day expiration date on the automatic-login cookie after your last manual login. Now, instead of expiring after 30 days, they won't expire for 20 years... and the 20-year period is reset with every pageview.

JB, thanks for implementing this. I still don't understand why you're rolling your own system, but I hope this update makes it more usable.

Are you saying that I can click on a bold thread (a thread which has new posts for me) and it will go to the oldest new post? Or do I still have to stumble around and guess where I left off?

Quote: Melman

Are you saying that I can click on a bold thread (a thread which has new posts for me) and it will go to the oldest new post? Or do I still have to stumble around and guess where I left off?

Yes. If you click the title of a thread from either the Recent Threads section on the main forum page, or the actual Recent Threads page, then it will take you to your first unread post in that thread. The same applies if you are browsing threads in a specific topic.

Hmm...still getting used to this, as when I click a bolded thread and then go back to to recent threads page, that thread seems to have dropped off. More convenient, I guess, but a little unnerving...

When I figured out what was happening, I kust marked everything as read, made it easier to get back to where I was before the update, as anything I missed was too much to catch up on.

From the Recent Threads page, when I click a specific page number beneath a post title, it still takes me to the last post, or doesn't work as expected. If I click the "1", I would expect to be taken to post 1 on page 1, and click the "2" to go to the top of page 2.

Granted, I just logged in for the first time since this update occurred, and just marked all posts as read. I'm still figuring it all out myself.

Side question: When typing a post, every 30 seconds or so, the cursor stops, and everything freezes up for a moment. If I am in the midst of typing, the letters I type while frozen will spill out as soon as it unfreezes, but it's still annoying. Does this happen to anyone else, specifically on this site?

IT has happened to me before on here when I was using IE. Since using FIrefox as my browser I have never had that problem.

Quote: Dween

From the Recent Threads page, when I click a specific page number beneath a post title, it still takes me to the last post, or doesn't work as expected. If I click the "1", I would expect to be taken to post 1 on page 1, and click the "2" to go to the top of page 2.

Ditto. And it doesn't matter if there are new posts in the thread or not.