Can you guys summarise what the new column represents please.<br /><br />Ta.<br /><br />Darren.<br />http://www.bullpen.com.au

Its being worked on, might of been empty when you asked. []/w3timages/icons/smile.gif[/]<br />New replies in this thread.<br /><br />Mateo Byler<br />CruceDeCaminos.com

And there are no orange icons. Is this also part of the deal?<br /><br />Darren.<br />http://www.bullpen.com.au

Correct. This gives you one place to look for new messages in a thread, and it doesn't take trying to distinguish the color of an icon.<br /><br />-------------------<br />Scream<br />WWWThreads Developer

I don't know how the response will be Scream, to be honest I'm not sure it's necessary. Also moving closer to UBB look. It was good to have the post icon serving two purposes.<br /><br />Darren.<br />http://www.bullpen.com.au

My feedback: I don't feel any more I am obliged to read the unread posts. That's not a bad effect to my mind []/w3timages/icons/smile.gif[/]<br /><br />

Since we are back on the topic of the "new" icon etc., is there any chance of having a way to distinguish new threads from old threads that merely have new replies? I suppose you can tell from the difference of the link color but that doesn't work if you switch between flat/threaded.<br /><br />Bill Dimm, MagPortal.com - [:red]free</font color=red> feeds for your site.

I've just been going with the designer suggestions. Not trying to make this look like any other forum but any time I can do something to make it look better, I'm all for it[]/w3timages/icons/wink.gif[/]. We'll see what the general opinion is. If everyone hates it we can switch back.<br /><br />-------------------<br />Scream<br />WWWThreads Developer

It is less intrusive then the new markers being splattered all over the place, isn't it?[]/w3timages/icons/wink.gif[/]<br /><br />-------------------<br />Scream<br />WWWThreads Developer

Not sure if this is possible or not. In order to do that we'd need to know if the number of new unread replies is less than the number of total replies, and this would take more calculations per thread. We know if there are new replies, but not how many are read/unread.<br /><br />-------------------<br />Scream<br />WWWThreads Developer

Yes, for sure... and I think that was one of the main goals. Can you reduce the replies column width now? Make it big enough for 3 digits... and instead of 'Replies' just use 'RE' as MTO suggested. That's what I would do. []/w3timages/icons/smile.gif[/]<br /><br />Muhammad Chishti<br />Creative dIRECTOR<br />[:white]http://www.imcuniverse.com</font color=white>

[:blue]Not sure if this is possible or not. In order to do that we'd need to know if the number of new unread replies is less than the number of total replies, and this would take more calculations per thread. We know if there are new replies, but not how many are read/unread.</font color=blue><br /><br />Yeah, and if you went that far, you could then list the # of new replies on postlist... I think it is good now, to save the extra calculations/resources.<br /><br />Muhammad Chishti<br />Creative dIRECTOR<br />[:white]http://www.imcuniverse.com</font color=white>

Do you think users will understand what RE means? I guess my real question is, will that look funny where every other heading is spelled out but then on that one column it's abbreviated?<br /><br />-------------------<br />Scream<br />WWWThreads Developer

Hmm, yeah. It actually doesn't really matter here since you use 90% of the screen, or so. If the width is restricted though, I guess we could just dig into the code and change it easily. I guess other feedback on this one would be good. []/w3timages/icons/smile.gif[/]<br /><br />Muhammad Chishti<br />Creative dIRECTOR<br />[:white]http://www.imcuniverse.com</font color=white>

Hmmm, this is quite interesting Scream, and it brings up all sorts of things for me--but I'll try to keep this as short as possible []/w3timages/icons/smile.gif[/].<br /><br />You're definetly on to something with this new 'new' feature, but it begs the question "what is it that regular forum users really need?". The answer is simplicity. Underneath all the toys needs to be a solid, easy-to-use foundation, and w3t falls a little short.<br /><br />For example, my forum client list is expanding to include software/hardware development companies and overwhelmingly the users of these forums want to be able to log in, find the new messages, reply to them if they want and get the hell outta' there. You just can't do this with w3t as currently you have to wade through the old messages to find the new ones.<br /><br />Before you got too far with this latest edition maybe the thing to do is to find out what is really needed.<br /><br />I'd suggest the following:<br /><br />When a person logs in they should have the option of viewing only the new messages of any particular board. If they choose this option and view a 'new' message listed, and then return to the index for the board it should still list the new messages only. If the user then wants to view all the messages in the board there should be an option listed somewhere, i.e. View All Messages. This should revert the users view to show all the messages of the board they are currently in.<br /><br />The 'new' flags should remain persistant until the user 'logs out' of that board, clearing the 'new' flags. This way, regardless of how the user views the board, if they want to view and/or reply to the new messages later, the unread (or read) 'new' messages can be quickly found.<br /><br />I imagine that this feature might be extremely difficult to code, but it is an essential part of the foundation of a good forum.<br /><br />Given that, and since I know nothing about perl/php and MySql, I've been tinkering with my old Miva script forums. I've been tweaking my Miva forums for a while now and and know them inside and out. While they are extremely simple, they are also extremely easy to use--but, they're ugly. Lately though I've been inspired by w3t to make them better looking.<br /><br />I'm currently working on the layout of a demo Miva forum so that I can have that 'ease-of-use' and groovy good looks too.<br />This Miva forum isn't nearly done yet (layout), but while it doesn't include markup, emoticons and such, it does have the ease-of-use that I mention above (and without using cookies). If you visit this forum please register so you can see what I'm talking about--I know you have a 'I don't visit other forums' policy, but this sample is essentially a w3t lite-lite-lite rip-off []/w3timages/icons/smile.gif[/]. Also, please ignore the look of funky log in page--I'm totaly redesigning it to include a lurkers forum listing. []/w3timages/icons/crazy.gif[/]<br /><br />I'm sure others here could add to my list of suggestions (or tell me to bug off entirely []/w3timages/icons/crazy.gif[/]) and I'm really interested in others views.<br /><br />Socrates<br />ForumExperts

There are a couple of things to discuss here.<br /><br />First, currently all new threads or threads with new replies in them are at the top of each forum. While this does give easy access to new posts you still have to pass by the replies you have read already.<br /><br />Next. Say we have an option that only shows new posts on a particular forum. You are going to be limited to 2 ways to display it. You can do it one way by listing the individual new posts like we do on the Recent Message listing or you can show the new posts in flat mode. Because you wouldn't be listing the replies in a thread you have already looked at you can't do a threading format because the thread logic would be gone without the early posts in the thread.<br /><br />This new location of the new message marker isn't necessarily a new feature it's just possibly a better solution to the old way of doing it. So, at this point it wasn't meant to be a jumping point into a new design, etc. Just a small enhancement.<br /><br />Sometimes, the amount of options that W3T has can limit some of the other things you can do. If, for example, we only had flat mode, then it would be pretty simple to only show new messages in a thread. Or if we didn't allow for users to choose the option of how many replies they want to show per page when viewing in flat mode, we could probably jump directly to the new posts.<br /><br />What you are talking about is something that will be worked on in a future upgrade. The real plan would be to have an option for your favorite boards and then the "my w3t" page would be changed to utilize this. You would have links within your start page to show the new messages on your favorite forums. None of this has been really thought out on how it will exactly work, but it will come.<br /><br />As for keeping the posts marked new until a user logs out of the board creates confusion. In my early versions of this program, about 1.3 or something I used to do that. But everyone complained because they couldn't tell if they had already read the thread or not when returning to the post listing.<br /><br />I'm definitely open to making things easier for the end user, but like I said, sometimes we are limited on what type of things we can do because of all of the options in the program and the variety of display modes.<br /><br /><br /><br />-------------------<br />Scream<br />WWWThreads Developer

Your forum looks an awful lot like W3T to me... []/w3timages/icons/wink.gif[/]<br /><br />I have made this suggestion many times, and I think Scream has it in the plans... to me the ability to view new messages since last login easily is the only real feature missing from the actual use of the forum (some admin stuff could be added, and he's working on that too).<br /><br />Hard to say W3T falls short in many areas, really... ease of use is one of the best things about it. Almost everything flows as it should, and makes sense.<br /><br />With the addition of a new messages since last login feature (maybe within the myW3T feature, here) I don't know how many forums out there will be able to touch W3T... now in PHP. []/w3timages/icons/smile.gif[/]<br /><br />Muhammad Chishti<br />Creative dIRECTOR<br />[:white]http://www.imcuniverse.com</font color=white>

Yeah, we can't have everything and still have it all work. []/w3timages/icons/smile.gif[/] I think a lot of things could come out of the myW3T feature once more ideas are mentioned, etc...<br /><br />Muhammad Chishti<br />Creative dIRECTOR<br />[:white]http://www.imcuniverse.com</font color=white>

Hehehe, I thought you'd feel that way. But isn't imitation the sincerest form of flattery? []/w3timages/icons/smile.gif[/]<br /><br />Just before I posted my other message I went back and punched in the 'Powered by...' table for kicks []/w3timages/icons/laugh.gif[/][]/w3timages/icons/laugh.gif[/]<br /><br />We have to remember Muhammad that the more we use and tweak w3t the more familiar it becomes to us. As we become familiar with it it becomes easy to say, "gosh, if only users had a neato button that made the category lists change order", when in reality, you can't even view new messages only...<br /><br />The main reason I'm even tweaking my Miva forum is bacause recently a big software development comany hired me to host a forum for them. I used a w3t forum and overwhelimngly the user hated it for the lack of simplicity.. They loved all the groovy features but a lot of users really needed a way to hit the forum quickly, get the new messages and bug out. The lack of this ability (especially for new users) scares people away. As a result, I'm cleaning up my Miva forums to look nicer, and they're going to use it instead.<br /><br />Don't get me wrong guys, I still think w3t is the best forum on the planet, but while it's loaded with fun features it seems to lack an essential basic function that is soooo important.<br /><br />Socrates<br />ForumExperts

[:blue]Just before I posted my other message I went back and punched in the 'Powered by...' table for kicks</font color=blue><br /><br />Yeah, as if the other stuff wasn't enough, I was thinking, man... []/w3timages/icons/laugh.gif[/]<br /><br />Muhammad Chishti<br />Creative dIRECTOR<br />[:white]http://www.imcuniverse.com</font color=white>