When you browser this site a lot, it gets tedious after some time. You actually have to read part of every node's text, to see if you have already read it or not. It's hard to spot new nodes that way, and it becomes very likely that you'll miss some interesting stuff.

What I would like, is that there was a colored bullet in the title bar, indicating that it's the first time you see the text – or that you've only seen part of it. I'm thinking of, for example, a green bullet for new nodes, a red or grey bullet for visited nodes, and a yellow bullet for nodes with new replies somewhere underneath.

That implies maintaining an overview for the whole site for each user, I know. It's a lot. However, it's very similar to what has to be remembered now, for the vote count. That, too, remembers per user if they have voted for a node. For every node.

Only whole texts, whether in overview pages, as individual pages, or as replies to other nodes, should set the flag. Texts that are not shown completely, for example with "read more..." at the bottom, or just as titles for deeply nested comments, shouldn't set this flag.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Visited nodes
by Chady (Priest) on Aug 26, 2002 at 12:34 UTC
    "You actually have to read part of every node's text, to see if you have already read it or not"

    even you cannot keep track of nodes you've read, so how can the system? the site can know if you visited the node, but cannot know if you've read it, you can even read it, but miss a reply, next time, should it be marked read?

    Colored bullets are something I think you have inside your browser; there's the visited links highliting in the browser that can tell you if you have clicked on such link before, and that's as far as computer programs can know about your reading. have you actually read the contents of the node, you have to judge that.

    You can also add your custom CSS (if your browser supports it) for visited links to display them as red.

    I don't know about other's opinions, but I feel it's a feature that's not worth the trouble (it needs a radical change in users database tables, not a simple patch), so I vote no.

    He who asks will be a fool for five minutes, but he who doesn't ask will remain a fool for life.

    Chady | http://chady.net/
[reply]
      even you cannot keep track of nodes you've read, so how can the system? the site can know if you visited the node, but cannot know if you've read it, you can even read it, but miss a reply, next time, should it be marked read?
      If it has been displayed as a whole, yes. It was on a page you've seen.
      I don't know about other's opinions, but I feel it's a feature that's not worth the trouble (it needs a radical change in users database tables, not a simple patch), so I vote no.
      I'm not so convinced it's such a radical change, any more. In fact, it could piggyback on the votes database table(s). If you voted for a node, you must have "read" it, yes? So add a vote status value: 1 for ++, -1 for --, NULL for not visited, all as before, and add a 0 for visited but not voted.
[reply]

        FYI: this is how the voting is done (I checked this long ago, and I might have missed something but this is what I remeber of it):

        The db doesn't keep track of what you have voted, each "voteable" node has a field where user_id's who voted are stacked, comma-seperated or something like that. So when you try to vote, it checks against that field to see if you've voted, so there isn't a table for you holding what you've voted on, there's a field for the node holding who voted on it, it's simpler that way.

        So, once again, you cannot "piggyback on the votes database table" cause there ain't any. I'm not assuming "it needs a radical change". I know it does, and you can ask other pmdevers.

        He who asks will be a fool for five minutes, but he who doesn't ask will remain a fool for life.

        Chady | http://chady.net/
[reply]
Re: Visited nodes
by Aristotle (Chancellor) on Aug 26, 2002 at 12:37 UTC
    I don't see the problem. Just go to Newest Nodes.

    Makeshifts last the longest.

[reply]
      That doesn't do it. For several reasons. First, newest nodes doesn't keep track of what you have visited. All it does is keeping track of when you last hit "I've checked all of these". If you've read some, but not others, newest nodes isn't keeping track.

      Second, even if it would do that it still doesn't keep into account that if you visit a node, you also see all the replies (up to 4 or 5 levels). Not even in combination of your browser is that kept track off.

      I've said it before, but Perlmonks (not just Perlmonks, but most "webboards") is a reinvention of Usenet, but with a far worse interface.

      Abigail

[reply]
          I've said it before, but Perlmonks (not just Perlmonks, but most "webboards") is a reinvention of Usenet, but with a far worse interface.
        Odd .. I like the presentation of Perl Monks way better than comp.lang.perl.misc, and I vastly prefer the signal to noise ratio here -- no spam, no PurlGurl/Godzilla (or whatever s/he's called now), lots of code samples, Q&A .. maybe I've misunderstood your comment.

        --t. alex
        but my friends call me T.

[reply]
      Ah, you don't. Well, I just went to newest nodes. I pressed "show only nodes less than 1 day old". I counted them: 173 new messages. Can't be a problem.
[reply]

        Don't forget that by hitting I've checked all of these you can gain a more finegrained list. At least if you visit frequently, the list rarely gets unmanageably large.

        Maybe you're interested in blakem's bivnn.cgi -- an alternate interface to newest nodes?

        I'm also currently working on a similar script myself with a few extra convenience features. (A useful prototype that does about as much as blakem's published version is already functional, but my own ideas that go beyond it aren't in yet.)

        Makeshifts last the longest.

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Re: Visited nodes
by RMGir (Prior) on Aug 26, 2002 at 19:41 UTC
    Somewhere on Joel on Software, Joel Spolsky commented that their discussions board adds something like "lastModified=unixEpochTimestampt" to all the top level links. (Actually, what they add is the number of replies, but doing it this way would let us catch edits, too...)

    The board's code ignores that parameter, but it lets your browser tell you if a discussion has changes since you read it.

    It might not be a bad idea for PM, and it's probably not impossible to implement, I'd think...

    The downside is that top-level nodes would either need to know the "most recent modtime" anywhere in their descendants, or would have to do a search every time newest nodes is generated. Obviously, it'd be cheaper to store it, but I don't know how hard it is to modify the db...
    --
    Mike

[reply]

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