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Active Topics

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Active Topics
I used some ASP forum software a while back, and it had an "Active Topics" feature. Basically, it would show you the posts since the last time you visited, a day ago, a week ago, and a month ago (you could select from a pulldown menu). I thought it was great because I would get a list of the topics/posts that were active since the last time I was on the board. Is there any feature with GF that does this?

Sean
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Re: [SeanP] Active Topics In reply to
Hi,

The search engine supports this. Go to the search and look at the "Show Posts from the last" pulldown option. If you are logged in, you can see a list of posts since your last visit to the forum.

You could easily make this a link on the home page, or somewhere else in your design.

Cheers,

Alex
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Gossamer Threads Inc.
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Re: [Alex] Active Topics In reply to
Ah... I never thought about leaving the search field empty to display all messages since a given time. I didn't know it worked that way. Cool.

Sean
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Re: [Alex] Active Topics In reply to
Hi Alex,

This looks like a great product, but I would have to agree that not having the capability to flag active topics is a miss, and for me, probably a showstopper. Let me offer this by way of explanation:

1) Just because a message was posted before my current visit doesn't mean I actually read it. I'd love to have a couple hours uninterrupted to sit and read the mail on the Gossamer Threads forums, but that simply isn't possible. So I get a phone call, get interrupted and have to leave, and with it goes any record of what I have or haven't seen.

2) Consider your snailmail box: You pull out the important stuff, or what you THINK is important, and read it with the intention to come back later to the "kind of" important stuff. If you have time you might read the circulars or catalogs. That's how it might work in an ideal world. In reality you get interrupted and some of your mail doesn't get read right away, you find gems in the Junkmail and what you thought was an important bill turns out to be a circular, but you have a system: You remember what you have opened and what you haven't

Now, instead, imagine you have a secretary called GF whose job it is to help you read your mail. Suppose you sat down to read your mail and got called out when you were halfway through. When you returned to your desk, your GF had randomized your mail pile and said,

"Sorry sir, you left! Did you really expect me to keep these piles here on your desk forever? I chucked it all over there in your OUT BOX with all that other stuff from last week. Here in your IN BOX you'll find all the new mail that came in since you were last here. I really don't think keeping track of what you had read was important. Oh, and by the way, I took the liberty of resorting your new mail into the order in which it arrived. I know you told me you wanted it sorted by category - bills, letters, catalogs, but I thought my way was better!"

3) So, I'd love to have active topics flagged. Some folks are browsers, others are searchers. I clicked search - since last login, and got results, but and it isn't sorted by forum, and it appears there are a lot of messages broken out in the same thread, so it's a little like opening your snailmail box and finding a bunch of stuff in random order and 98% of it is trash. Well it isn't trash here, but it really isn't browsable in a category sense.

If you have an opportunity pick up a copy of the Steve Krug's usability guide, "Don't Make Me Think!" There is a great diagram in there that shows the web page as created by the Graphic Designer, the Applications guy so forth. That alone is worth the price of the book.

Regards,

Matt
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Re: [memobug] Active Topics In reply to
My apologies. I confused the Active Threads topic with the New Posts topic. I couldn't find any documentation of the New Posts tracking and mistakenly assumed that GT didn't monitor New Posts. I hope I understand correctly that it does know which messages have and have not been read



Pirate
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Re: [memobug] Active Topics In reply to
Hi,

Yes, Gossamer Forum does track read and not read messages. You should see a yellow icon beside new posts, or threads with new replies.

Cheers,

Alex
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Gossamer Threads Inc.