Re: New GL board

Posted by Will <Nabble> on Aug 05, 2008; 1:19am
URL: https://support.nabble.com/New-GL-board-tp532919p669728.html

Thanks for this very thoughtful post.

I did play with the CBS board. I registered an account to try the unread feature because KS mentioned it. See this post http://n2.nabble.com/New-GL-board-tp532919p573753.html 

The dropdown for the unread threads doesn't work. I did a few tests at different times, i.e. clicking a few top threads, and  then use the dropdown to filter, and it just doesn't work. I didn't particularly try the 2nd part to go directly to unread posts within a thread, but I don't remember seeing such a nice thing. I would have been surprised if I saw it. If it's hard to track unread threads, then it will even be harder to track unread posts within a thread.

The reason I ask this is that it's difficult do brute-force track all the posts that a user clicked. We just rely on the natural browser way, which is to change link color after you have clicked it. What really bothers me in the CBS board is that they disabled this natural mechanism, so I cannot tell what has been clicked.

P.S. It would definitely be nice to have a visual indicator of new/unread posts in a thread.

When you see a thread in the your forum, there are 2 links. One is the subject link that goes to the first post, the other the link in the "Last Post" column. If the "subject" link is unclicked, then it's definitely a new thread. If the "subject" link is clicked, and the "last post" link is unclicked, then it means it's a thread that you have visited before but now has some new posts in it. If both are clicked, then it means you have seen everything there. So, I can derive 3 states by looking at link color. I like this better because I don't need any special knowledge to know what's going on. Versus if I see a green flag or a blue icon, I have to guess what it means.

Because of embedding, we try to keep all UI elements as few as possible. So, we try to avoid adding anything unless it's absolutely needed.