Ideas for ILX

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.

Jay, you can kind of do this now, though it's certainly not obvious... If you use the text search, and enter something like:

radiohead AND displayName:"Ned Raggett"

It should work - remember to change to posts (if that's what you're looking for).

ignore lists

http://www.b3tards.com/u/c2d08cf4e23cfbd9a0c0/duck_hunt_dog.gif

― galumphing lummox (bug), Saturday, August 1, 2009 3:48 PM (Yesterday)

Bug, yes I was thinking that would be something I should do.

― Keith, Saturday, August 1, 2009 3:49 PM (Yesterday)

An idea from the missus: could this be made thread-specific? Like, ignore (User X) on this thread but not that thread?

RSS feeds for a specific user's posts would be nice.

and crepey

Surm, 1,209

― Keith, Saturday, August 1, 2009 10:26 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

oh wow thank you for this btw

how hard would it be to have tabbed new answers lists? sort of like metafilter I guess--where I can have one tab with site new answers, one tab with just ilm, one tab with my favorite sub-boards, all on a single page? would be nice if it updated live but I imagine that's a pain.

I haven't read this entire thread but I wish there was a suggest keep function that would operate exactly like suggest ban except in reverse

my biggest complaint with the suggest ban function is that it only gives voice to the people who say 'no', and it only allows you to vote *against* someone and no way to vote *for* them

dude

Like if I'm searching for a post where Ned Raggett mentioned Radiohead

It's a vision.

OK so if you're logged in, then for any threads you have read, if there are subsequent new messages on that thread, the bullet on the new answers page will indicate it - on most stylesheets as an empty bullet, but as different colours on some. Happy for suggestions except penguins as to how it should be indicated though - for now, let me know if it works OK.

Having the Statscock back would be nice.

update-sensitive bullet seems to be working for me right now! (on blueski-2 i think)

nb all of this is super awesome, Keith, thank you. <3

46 logged in users active in the past five minutes

Sweet! Thanks Keith! Is there an easy way to do this on the new answers page of each board?

I miss RSS, I like to know I haven't missed anything when I haven't been around for a while.

The updated thing wasn't working on others because I forgot to update the stylesheets, but have done so with style and old.

Nick - it's easy to do, it's just a question of finding a neat place to put it... Don't want it to get too cluttered.

Matt - see above.

Ah, thanks.

Also, not sure if this was covered, but the ability for mods to de-index threads with a simple tickbox would be really appreciated.

I'll sort the rest of the stylesheets in a minute for the updated threads thing.

Don't want it to get too cluttered.

Totally agree!

I had to reload the stylesheet for the bullets to work, but it does now.

This is mighty confusing. I'm using Blueski-2.css and the bullets apparently (I never noticed before) are alternating squares: big/small/big/small/big/small.
At the moment, none are empty, but if they were, then empty would mean something, but big/small wouldn't mean anything?

Please to think up some other and immediately obvious way to show new messages on threads (if that's really necessary) (e.g. http://www2.dsre.net/images/blankpage_ico.gif)

I'll sort the rest of the stylesheets in a minute for the updated threads thing.

― Keith, Sunday, August 2, 2009 2:42 PM (28 minutes ago)

Very cool! I loaded old.css long enough to see how it worked, looking forward to seeing it on style3.

ok, so on this stylesheet, it's a black square (big or small) bullet for new messages and a grey (big or small) for no new messages/unread/other.

What browser are you using? They shouldn't be big/small, it's just darker (on mine anyway).

They should be darker when a thread you've read has new answers on it...

Rock - it's done on them all now.

or maybe some kind of "new message on thread since you last visited it" tooltip when hovering over that bullet kinda thing? Not everyone is going to read this thread or immediately guess/see the bullets suddenly mean something.

FFX 3.5.1

Hmm, was working on old.css and now it isn't.

Well, if you can think of something good then yes, but I think some kind of "New Messages" thing would be too intrusive, though I understand it's not immediately obvious what they mean.

Weird, I'm using FFX 3.5.1 too, though on a Mac. Don't get the big/small thing. Perhaps it's the Windows version.

Correction: Blueski-2.css bullets aren't alternating big/small, they're (probably?) totally random:

http://i25.tinypic.com/mskmxd.png

Or are some threads fuller than others, like a fuel gauge? :-)

Ed, it's probably just because I rebooted to fix all the other stylesheets, so the server's forgotten your position on some recent threads.

Yeah, that's weird, Stan I mean the only change to the stylesheet I've made is this:

.updated {
	color: #000;
}

And that style should only be used when the thread's got new messages, so a bit puzzled as to why anything else would have changed.

It may have been like this forever, I only just looked at the bullets since they suddenly mean something. (when they're black, but not when they're big or small)