Ideas for ILX

Keith: Ah gotcha re: server performance. So what about a way to not load the start of the thread instead of not loading the middle? Or maybe some fine tuning of some kind.Sometimes I have to load all the messages to just get the two or three I hadn't seen since the last time I checked a particular thread. (I hope that makes sense, I'm not sure I'm explaining it right.)

i know, i can finally easily just see a huge list of all my own posts and read and reread them over and over again, its exciting, really seperating the wheat from the chaff here

Yes, I see. Yes I could do that - get the most recent 100 or something.

The original logic some years ago was to be as much to as many people as possible - to allow people to read the context of what the thread was about as well as always get the most recent stuff, but yes I could do what you're suggesting, though I'd need to think how it would work ergonomically...

x-post lol

I've often wished for some rearrangement of the Search page, so I don't have to scroll past the instructions to click in the search field.

There are probably some other ways the Search page could be made more ergonomic -- the pull-down list of boards has always felt kind of cumbersome -- but I'm not sure what specific changes I'd suggest.

If the rest of the Internet were as functional as ILM, life would be sweet indeed.

Yes, I do agree it's not great that page. I recently moved the titles and posts button to make it more obvious, but it isn't obvious to me how to best reorganize it to make it much better...

maybe make something like in the style of the "show formatting help" button on it

Yes...

I also just want to mention how much I love blueski-2.css. It's so "in the spirit" of ILX and I am very fond of it.

i dont know, maybe that didnt make sense

I think it probably did... I did it.

Dropping the search instructions below the two forms would reduce the amount of scrolling required ... there could be a link at the top of the page to jump down to the instructions.

Are the two forms used about equally? I don't know if I've ever used the Given User feature. If there were a separate page for the Text Search form, I'd probably go there directly.

Just speaking from my own experience, having the Text Search form remember its settings from my most recent search, and selecting the text entry field automatically when I enter that page, would be great for doing repeated searches.

oh cool xpost

I think ilx is just dandy.

I am another who would like to know how many posts I've made, Keith. Would be interesting as I've only ever been a sporadic poster but have been here for around 9 years. Eek.

Emily, 1,963 posts

Brad, yes having it remember settings would be good, though obviously a bit harder.

the current post count is for the last 2 years (since relaunch) or all-time?

If it's all-time, then that's about 218 posts a year. 18 posts a month. 4.5 posts per week. Less than one per day. So technically I don't post here at all.

Tehresa, it's probably since relaunch, unless you used the same email address as you did before, as everyone re-registered.

Hey keith, how about when someone clicks on a thread, you stick a "view previous page" above the first unread message, show the next 100 msgs, and if there are more, stick a "display all messages" @ the end. Not sure if some1 said this already but I think it's what others were getting at

Thanks, Keith!

OK I get that. To be honest, the code that displays the messages and does all that stuff is so massively complex I might have trouble - it's certainly the messiest bit of ILX. There's so much going on in different circumstances, but if I could figure it, then that would make some sense.

x-post

Keith you are grebt and I'm sorry if that post came off a bit demanding or entitled!

Xp cool

Keith, would it be easy to create a yes/no preference that would let Admin Functions show for sitewide mods all the time?

This is all very cool, btw! I'm sorry nobody could go out to the pub tonight, but it's ILX's gain!

Oh that's OK, it didnt... x-post.

Rock, yes that would be OK, but surprised you'd want it!

could you do that for all mods?

If I were to do it, I wouldn't differentiate.

everybody here is equally kind

I might hate it, but it would be cool to have the option, esp. on the occasional thread where 20 people want to know how many SBs they have. Currently, every time a mod refreshes the thread, the admin functions go away.

oh actually iw as going to mention that on my cell browser (blackberry) the admin functions are ALWAYS there. not sure if that's fixable, obviously not a priority.

Dunno Tehresa, My work blackberry is broken at the moment, but I'll have a look when I get it sorted or get a new one. It's probably just because they just don't work very well!

Alternatively, use the mobile interface and avoid the admin links altogether.

http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/BoardsXmlControllerServlet?stylesheet=mobile.xsl

yeah, that stylesheet results in lolhueg text for some reason? not a big deal/priority, really.

Is it still like that? I changed it to make it smaller, recently. If it's still too big, let me know and I'll change it.

One version or other back in the mists of time changed the shape and filled-ness of the bullets in new answers depending on whether there were new answers since you last read it. This is probably a minor CSS thing, but can we have it back?

Also can we have a mobile interface that is a little more blackberry friendly, I should check out the mobile interface again and tell you what that means.

Could the search function be changed so that if you put in a start date and no end date it searches everything newer than that date? At the moment it ignores the start date if there's no end date, so you have to make up a date in the future. Not much of a problem, but still...

(Possibly similar for end date and no start date, but I don't do that very often)

Thanks, sorry.

Ed, that was never in my version so it's programming work, but I'll see what I can do.

Spacecadet, yes I didn't know that was an issue; it should behave as you say.

whoa that was cool. i just clicked on that link keith posted and now everything is awesome

One request I have would be to notify me when a poll has ended that I had voted in. I could just bookmark the thread, but I don't care to follow all the discussion, I just want to know when the results are in.

oh, i have one. on the page where it says youve successfully logged out of ilx, can there be a link to the front page?

seconded

this is really great keith, that we've gotten to the point where it's fun little fine-tuning stuff that we're thinking of

Only thing I'd like is a preview post option, not so much for checking typos but making sure links/pics/formatting shows up ok.

So this thing about bookmarks highlighting where you've unread messages... If I do this, it won't be perfect, in that I don't store on the database where a user last read a thread to, I just store it in memory - the last 200 threads you read and of course this'll all disappear when I restart the server. However, this should be good enough for most purposes.

It's not that, that I think about, but that there are basically three states you can be in:

• You've not read a thread at all (so technically, all of its messages are unread to you)
• You've read a thread and it's not been updated since you read it
• You've read a thread and it's had new messages since you read it

Any thoughts?

well it seems more useful to think of the first two as something you're not interested in, so just the third would be highlighted. like most american posters wouldn't want a dis ting/soccer thread highlighted along with threads they've clicked on (and taken interest in) that have new answers. no offense to "football" but you know. another example would be the 500 cable news threads we have

It probably moves into a slightly different area this, but there are threads I've not read at all because they're newly bumped or I've just missed them, and threads I've not read because I'm never going to (eg football).

I'd like the former to have a highlight and the latter not, but that'd mean effectively a killfile for threads, so you could distinguish.

Xp haha fuk football and skips in general

we're on dis ting kicking a ball into a skip from quite far away

Yes, this is why I think it's tricky. Killfile isn't really a practical option, with 170,000 and growing threads out there.

OK so thinking about it, yes I think it should only highlight threads that you've actually read and that have since been updated.

Would it be possible to search by user AND text? Like if I'm searching for a post where Ned Raggett mentioned Radiohead, and I don't remember the date, it's virtually impossible to find by searching either "Ned Raggett" or "Radiohead" separately.