Large Scale Central

Looking for best way to navigate/read posts

Now that we have a “Mark all as Read” option (bottom right of an individual forum - thanks, Vincent) I’m now trying to figure out the best way to get through the daily posts and not miss any…or mark them as read if I’m not interested.

Pressing the Home tab at the top of the screen shows me the last 15 posts under the title of Active Topics. I can click on a title that I am interested in and I immediately go to the post in question. Pretty cool.

I can get a bit more detail for each post after this in a section titled “What’s New”. You can basically view the last post in its entirety, but if you click on the “topic” link, you’ll go to the first post in that topic.

Still, if I do either of those, there’s still a chance of missing something if there were more than 15 posts since I last checked. Pretty likely, as the site is getting a lot of traffic and they don’t really show me what I haven’t read yet.

As another alternative, I can click on the ‘Forums’ link in the top frame. This will list all of the forums, but there’s no indication that there is anything new since I was last on.

However, if I click on a specific forum, such as “General Discussion”, I get what I want. Here is a list of all of the topics in that particular forum. And, just to the left of each topic is a little icon.

If that topic has replies, I see this. But, if it has posts I have not yet read, I get to see this icon on top of it indicating that it has some posts that I have not yet read.

After viewing that list, if I see stuff I don’t really care about, I can just click on the “Mark all as read” link and go on to the next forum.

But, to go to the next forum, I have to go back to the list of forums, and then choose the next forum. Well, with my memory, I’ll probably click on the “General Discussion” forum about 3 times before I remember that I’ve been here already.

With us old farts in mind, would it be possible to have a “Next Forum” option link to click on?

Or, is there a way to show that there are unread posts in each forum when looking at the forums list?

How are you guys navigating through all the stuff? I am open to other ideas!

The way forum ‘unread messages’ is tracked has changed, and, for some odd reason, its VERY hard to get the count of unread messages on the main forum list.

I THINK I could make a page of every newly-active thread (like the 15 most recent) but instead have it be all since your last login.

I think.

Let me noodle on this a bit.

Bruce, I’m like you… Just trying to run my way thru the topics…

I haven’t figured out a good way, either… It was nice, having a tag in the general forum area to tell us there’s a new entry there…

Will have to wait and see what Bob does, or can do…

Andy Clarke said:

Bruce, I’m like you… Just trying to run my way thru the topics…

I haven’t figured out a good way, either… It was nice, having a tag in the general forum area to tell us there’s a new entry there…

Will have to wait and see what Bob does, or can do…

Hope you like noodles… (http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-sealed.gif)

One of the Swiss fora I visit has a “unread posts” button at the top of the main page (equivalent of “Forums” page in this forum. The way it works: when one is done one clicks “all posts read” - also at the top of the main page. On the next visit one clicks “unread posts” and they pop up on a separate page (part of the search function).

It’s a neat implementation and much quicker than anything I’ve found on other fora.

I’m glad it’s not just me, I have been using the date of the last post as a guide which helps but some sort of a new posts indicator would be better.

Yes, the single biggest heartburn I have with the site, is finding unread posts… every other forum I read (about 10) has this feature.

Someone must have implemented it in this software.

Greg

On top of this, the “newest topics” list can have duplicates… a waste of “space” on the list…

This part of the code is seriously poor… Unbelievable that the developers decided that easily showing the unread posts in every forum in one place was not worth it.

Looking at other forums, often the individual forums are not related, like a car site, and each forum is a different model… those people probably are reading only about one model…

Oh well, please Bob, this and embedding video are the top 2 “wants” in my opinion…

Greg

Greg Elmassian said:

Oh well, please Bob, this and embedding video are the top 2 “wants” in my opinion…

Greg

I’ll second this! (http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-smile.gif)

Bruce Chandler said:

Now that we have a “Mark all as Read” option (bottom right of an individual forum - thanks, Vincent)

Hmm, I don’t see any option on the bottom right of any page. Does this make me on of the old guys, because I can’t see (http://largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-smile.gif)or is it that I’m missing something?

All of this is precisely what I was asking in a topic I posted over a week ago. The answer I got was that the writers of the new software didn’t deem it valuable enough to include an unread posts thingy. Correct me if I mis-quoted anything, Bob.

Dan: That’s correct. No (*&#$ clue WHY they changed things up like that. Its on my short list of things to add, as soon as Im done squashing obvious bugs.

Matt Kirichok said:

Bruce Chandler said:

Now that we have a “Mark all as Read” option (bottom right of an individual forum - thanks, Vincent)

Hmm, I don’t see any option on the bottom right of any page. Does this make me on of the old guys, because I can’t see (http://largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-smile.gif)or is it that I’m missing something?

Matt,

This is the location of the button

Bob McCown said:

Dan: That’s correct. No (*&#$ clue WHY they changed things up like that. Its on my short list of things to add, as soon as Im done squashing obvious bugs.

Main forum index page should now display the blue arrow over forums that have unread messages, the same as a forum will display unread messages.

Im not pleased with the size/color of all the forum icons, but fixing that is WAAAAY down my priority list…

THANK YOU BOB!

Saves a lot of time each day.

Greg