Posted by HisHughness on 6/10/04 12:13am
Msg #2932
Suggestion
Harry, this is a well-intended suggestion. The new format is great, and improves the utility of this forum by leaps and bounds. I assume you can program it any way you wish. For me, it would be even more useful if it initially pulled up in the linear format; that way I can instantly determine what the latest posts are, and find where I left off. At that point I can choose to pursue either topic or thread. You may want to see how other posters feel about it.
In any event, thanks for giving us the many options under the new format.
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Reply by Harry [NR] on 6/10/04 1:55am
Msg #2935
I'm glad to see someone is paying attention (in actually using the multiple views) and we welcome the feedback. :)
Yes, I can change nearly every aspect of the forums because I have developed it all from scratch. Each forum has a default view and I made "Threaded" the default for General Discussion because I felt "Linear" was extremely confusing/cluttered. While Threaded obviously makes discussions a bit easier to follow, the disadvantage, as you point out, is not being able to quickly identify the most recent posts.
Linear, on the other hand, does just that. It's extremely fast (from the server perspective, it doesn't take nearly as much processing) and is great for forums with less activity, like Feedback and Announcements. The Topics view is similar, except it only shows root-level messages, but adds the body text, which is nice.
Going back to the question of, "Can it be done?" If anything, we would want to support a default view on a user-by-user basis. I was thinking about storing the last view used for logged-in users, which I can persist in the database. For others, if we wanted user-by-user settings, I would have to use cookies, which I dislike, though it could be done. The bottom line is that I'll continue to work toward additional flexibility. For now, however, my highest priorities related to the forums are:
1) Finishing the Search functionality, a full-text indexing delight.
2) Adding "Preview" to prevent the inadvertent posting of messages.
3) Completing the ability to link entire threads to company profiles. (Yeah, slow- or low-paying companies are going to love that.)
Of course, these priorities fall behind 42 other things, most of which contribute more directly to our bottom line, so I'm not sure when it will be. Probably the next time I get really bored.
In the meantime, here's one thing you could do... Add a shortcut to your desktop or favorites pointing to the following:
http://www.notaryrotary.com/forums/forums.asp?forumid=1AAA00000003&action=list
That link will default to the Linear view.
Best,
Harry
Notary Rotary, Inc.
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