Request for longer pages

[B Marcelly]

Hi,
Another wish for Christmas
A thing I hate in phBB forums is that when you display "View New Posts" you only get them by pages of 25 posts. Then you have to click on Next Page (if you have noticed that this time there is more than one page).
This was useful with old modem connections, but now with Mbits/s connections...

So the request : in the User Control Panel > Board preferences > Edit Display Options : add an option to set the number of posts per page (so I could change from 25 to e.g. 200).

Same request for viewing any other list of threads, e.g. the threads in Writer section.
Same request for viewing a long thread.

______
Bernard

[DrewJensen]

I am in the middle of working on the test site - this is one that perhaps I could sneak in as I think it is fairly localized from a code perspective...

I'll take a look and get back on that.

[huw]

I expect the answer to be "No" because it probably isn't trivial, but I'll ask in case - would it be possible to have a "Mark posts read" link on the view of new posts?

[JohnV]

would it be possible to have a "Mark posts read" link on the view of new posts?

I suppose this means that the subject of a read post changes color and I would second that request.

I would add my own request here also which is somewhat similar. I read a post and then click the back arrow. When I do this at oooforum.org the last post read is "boxed" with a boarder making a easy to find your place in the listing. I hope that can be implemented here.

[DrewJensen]

would it be possible to have a "Mark posts read" link on the view of new posts?

I suppose this means that the subject of a read post changes color and I would second that request.

I would add my own request here also which is somewhat similar. I read a post and then click the back arrow. When I do this at oooforum.org the last post read is "boxed" with a boarder making a easy to find your place in the listing. I hope that can be implemented here.

Just went an tried that on OOoOForum...yes, I see what you mean...hmm..not sure how to duplicate that here...I'll look and see what I can come up with and let folks know. - in fact there are a number of different requests regarding the 'new posts list' and I need to see if maybe I can fashion something that addresses more then just this...

Well, up till now I could always claim that since the Stable version of phpBB wasn't out then waiting was prudent..but alas I am about to lose that excuse..LOL...

[acknak]

I read a post and then click the back arrow. When I do this at oooforum.org the last post read is "boxed" with a boarder making a easy to find your place in the listing.

I think this is done by the browser: it's highlighting the default link, which is the last link you clicked when you left that page. However, if that's all it is, I'm not sure why it would not happen with the UCF site as well.

Ok, it is happening here. Maybe it's just harder to see:

link_highlight.png (6.22 KiB) Viewed 8565 times

I added the red marks to point to the box; it is quite hard to see.

In general, I think phpBB does not make it easy enough to step through a list of threads--but I don't know that there's a lot we can do about that.

I just go through the list all at once and open the threads I want to read in a new tab. Then I can step through the tabs easily. The only drawback there is that the tab views can go stale.

[DrewJensen]

Well - yes it is a function of the browser, but, that it is also a function of the CSS that is currently being used by the browser.

For example - if you notice that under OOoForum and here when you load the list each entry has a few adornments - The icon to the left with a color to show that the subject has a post that has not been read, an icon just to the left of the subject title that takes you to the first un-read post.

At both sites if you click to a subject and then use the page back function to return to the list these icons remain unchanged - if you reload the page at this point then the icons will either change appearance or disappear. This is true for both sites.

The difference is that at OOoForum the text color of the subject line changes when you return - on the forum here it does not. This is, as far as I am concerned, a bug.

Having taken a quick look at the CSS used by both sites you can see that quite a few changes have been made. Not surprising. It is there, this change in text color, in the CSS code but is being ignored and at the moment I can't tell you why. Yet.

[JohnV]

acknak,

Just read your post and Drew's reply, hit the back arrow and saw no border around this thread's Subject as display in your post. But I get that at oooforum.org so perhaps it's not a not a function of the browser.

Using Firefox as my browser.

[huw]

That dotted box is done by the browser. I don't know if it can be forced in the CSS, but I don't think it is a browser setting.

I think there is something odd, or processor intensive about this forum's CSS. The Board Index page is slow to load completely - it mis-renders (in IE6) with several overlaps, then noticeably pauses (like when a page has an image on a seperate, really slow server), then re-renders correctly. This could be due to our proxy/cacheing but I don't see similar problems with any other site.

[acknak]

I see the outline with Firefox (I normally use Seamonkey), if I right-click the topic title and choose "Open Link in new tab". That leaves the summary list page undisturbed and the outline is still there when I come back to the list.

If instead, I simply click on the topic title, then use "Back" to return to the list page, the list page seems to be re-loaded at that point, and the link outline is lost for me too. Since there is no change in link color either, there is no visual indication at all of what you've read.

FWIW, I have not noticed any performance or rendering issues at all with the site.

PS: Wait a second, what I wrote can't be right: if the list page gets refreshed when you return to it, then the topic icon should change from red (un-read!) to blue. I don't want to test it right now because I have a list of my own to step through, but in theory, the icons should tell you.

[DrewJensen]

Pages are not automatically refreshed when you use the Page back function in your browser. The is normal behavior for browsers, AFAIK. What you are seeing is what is in your cache when you do this.

[acknak]

Right; I agree--that's exactly what I'm seeing.

On clicking "Back", the page is not refreshed, but the link outline is lost. If I then refresh the list page, the icons change to update the read/unread status.

Both FFox and Seamonkey behave this way for me.

[DrewJensen]

Right, but here is then the difference. Under the older software your cache also now holds the information that you viewed the page for a particular posting - then color of the font then changes to reflect that this is a 'Visited Link', again Browser 101 stuff. This color is also used to draw the little box around the link text, which is now a nice contrast to the background.

Under the newer software this color change doesn't take place, and the box around the link text is the not nearly as easily differentiated from the background.

Sadly I see that this is the behavior on every one of the phpBB sites I have visited using a theme derived from one used here - including the phpBB home page..so how easily this can be changed is yet to be seen - but as I say I'll take a look and see what I can do.

Which also opens another avenue for discussion - this is a php program - php / xhtml / CSS - to be more precise. I know there are people on the board that are more experienced with this mix then me and if anyone wants to tack a hand at helping with this, I'd be more then happy to oblige and act as an integrator for any code changes they might make.

[huw]

I just realised the fine dotted box around a link is the highlighting of the "current centre of focus" or whatever it is called. If you press Enter, that is what is "clicked" on. It can be moved around with Tab, Shift+Tab, & Ctrl+Tab. I see this dotted box on both this forum and the other.

The dotted box is distinct from "visited link" colouring because it shows exactly how far down a list of links you have got, regardless of whether you visited some of them on another occasion. It is quite a fragile indicator though, being easily lost with a single key press, and it will only be there if you only read a thread and then press Back. If you actually post a reply, then use Back to return to the forum list, the dotted box is gone (I just tried on the other forum).

This all applies to Windows with IE, but I wouldn't be surprised if other OSs have copied it.

[JohnV]

Has Bernard's original request ever been addressed? If so, I would expect to see it in Control Panel > Board Preferences but I don't.

I have trouble with the 2nd and/or 3rd page of New Posts "timing out" when I forget to open them in a new tab when I start.

[DrewJensen]

what do you mean by timing out?

And no I don't think we really addressed the request - not directly.

[DrewJensen]

Ok - well I can't offer per user settings at the moment - however - there is a board wide setting for this.

I just increased the topic listing page from 25 to 50 - so we'll see how that works out.

Let me know - Pro and Con...

[Hagar Delest]

Fewer clicks and better visibility for not recent posts, so +1 with that 50 threads setting.

[JohnV]

Drew,

By "timing out" I mean that if one views new posts you may see that there are 2 or 3, etc. pages. If one spends considerable time answering questions on page 1 or gets called away from the computer for a while then clicking on the next page results in no topics being found. I don't know what that time period is but it also happens at oooforum.org.

The only solution I have found is to immediately open the other pages in new tabs. Unfortunately the solution requires that you remember to do it. Because I can find myself in the bathroom and wonder why I'm there my memory is not as good as it use to be.

Thanks for the 50 topics adjustment. I don't know about others but I'd be happy if they were all on one page.

[DrewJensen]

You know that happens to me at OOoForum now but not here...

I've meaning to try and run down why- but it wasn't all that much of a priority - perhaps I should push it up the list..