View posts since last visit thingie

[Bellywobble]

I've just returned from a few days away and clicked on my usual "view posts ..." and there are so many that I can't read them all tonight. I'd love to be able to save the list for tomorrow, but when I come back tomorrow, I'll have lost them, so I think it would be a great idea to have some kind of facility to hang on to them. they are far too interesting to miss.

[paolo]

Unfortunately this isn't possible. you could open each section and click on the threads with new posts. They will have a yellow symbol on the left instead of a white one.

[Alan Knighting]

Being on 24/7 broadband I have a simple solution.

I do not close my session on LMH I minimise it, get on with other things and maximise LMH when I want to continue with it. If I am not continuing until the next day I do not shut down my PC overnight.

Wealth Warning – Do not do this if you are using a dial-up modem. If you do your telephone bill will be "interesting".

Fluffy

[Giddy Goat]

Hey! I sit at this thing with blinkers on - that's useful to know, Paolo, I've never noticed those symbols before! Thanks!

[Bellywobble]

That's useful. I had noticed them, but thought they too would disappear once I had closed down and opened up again. I do tend to minimise during the day, but always shut the computer down at night because my husband says I must. I don't know why.

[enid]

I love my mac - at night I don't shut it down I just put it to sleep (warm drink bedtime story etc) - this facility means everything is still there waiting for me when I wake it up in the morning

[debk]

you could open each section and click on the threads with new posts. They will have a yellow symbol on the left instead of a white one

Perfect. This should help those of us poor souls who have spouses, children, dogs, unreliable ISPs and electrical outages that disconnect our PCs without permission. Thanks, Paolo!
debk

[Giddy Goat]

I love my mac - at night I don't shut it down I just put it to sleep (warm drink bedtime story etc)

My Mac crashed earlier this year (no back-up organised at the time either!) So that's where I've been going wrong Enid! Does your Mac have any storytime preferences?

[Mountain Goat]

you could open each section and click on the threads with new posts

Paolo apologies

I'm being ultra-thick here.

New posts from when?

MGoat

[vrooje]

Do not do this if you are using a dial-up modem. If you do your telephone bill will be "interesting".

Couldn't you just disconnect your modem overnight, and then re-dial in the morning? If you just leave your pages open, they aren't persistently trying to connect to the internet (at least, the forum doesn't do that). So if you disconnected, you could still leave them open, and then just remember not to try clicking on anything until you've re-connected!

you could open each section and click on the threads with new posts. They will have a yellow symbol on the left instead of a white one.

Doesn't this expire, too, much like the "view posts since last visit" feature? In fact, I seem to recall that I started using the all-new-posts feature because of that. When I would log in but not have time to read everything, the next time I came back, the posts I hadn't read were not still marked as new. I got tired of checking every section's "last post" feature to see which ones had been updated since I was last able to actually read posts.

[Alan Knighting]

Brooke,

Couldn't you just disconnect your modem overnight, and then re-dial in the morning? If you just leave your pages open, they aren't persistently trying to connect to the internet (at least, the forum doesn't do that). So if you disconnected, you could still leave them open, and then just remember not to try clicking on anything until you've re-connected!

I think it is essential to maintain the connection otherwise the session is ended.

Fluffy

[paolo]

you could open each section and click on the threads with new posts

Paolo apologies

I'm being ultra-thick here.

New posts from when?

Posts that you have not looked at, from however far back. Although from what Brooke says this is not the case. I thought this was correct (and Brooke was WRONG!!! ). But I haven't tested it so she is probably right.

[Guest3]

Paolo said

Although from what Brooke says this is not the case. I thought this was correct (and Brooke was WRONG!!! ). But I haven't tested it so she is probably right.

Doesn't take much for me to get confused !

[vrooje]

I think it is essential to maintain the connection otherwise the session is ended.

Hmm... we may be talking about different things here. I agree with you that the session can expire even without disconnecting from the internet -- you can just go idle for X minutes (I haven't bothered to time how long that is).

But what I'm describing is the following scenario:

• You log on to the forum and click on "View posts since last visit," thinking you will have plenty of time to view the 10 new posts.
  
  You get called away from the computer unexpectedly. Just before you leave the computer, you bring up the new-posts page again, and then disconnect from the internet (if you have dial-up), leaving that page open.
  
  You come back 5 hours later, re-connect to the internet, open a new browser window (or tab), and log back into the forum.
  
  You switch to the window (or tab) you never closed, which still shows the page you left it on -- new posts since your "last" login.
  
  You read them, either by opening a new tab or a new window for each link (not just clicking on each link). The posts are no longer considered new by the forum, but that doesn't matter, since the links to them -- from the search page you opened while they were still new -- still work. So you are reading posts that are new to you but not officially new.
  
  After you've read all those posts, you refresh the "view posts since last visit" page. It will now list all the new posts since you had to unexpectedly leave the forum. Then you can go and read those -- unless you get unexpectedly interrupted, in which case, repeat this entire cycle.

Hopefully this (rather long -- I swear it's easier than it seems) list is clear...

Paolo, I've always thought that the forum decided which threads were "new" and which weren't by checking the date of last post against the date listed in the session variable, rather than by keeping track in the database of exactly which threads have been read for which new user.

My reasoning is just that the latter seems like it would be really hard on the database. Right now, we have 2445 threads and 1252 users, so in order to completely keep track of who has read what thread, wouldn't that require a database table with 1252 rows and 2445 columns (or vice-versa)? And you'd have to add new columns every day, which doesn't seem efficient to me. But perhaps someone should test this...

[Big Sis..]

OOhERR
Im sure Brooke is right
but I didnt realise what I did was so complicated....maybe I could get a grant and sponsorship...any contributions gratefully accepted...