I can't seem to quite pin down when FlyerTalk thinks my last-visited date (and therefore which forums have the glowing light bulb and which folders are red) should change. Sometimes it seems to change while I am in the middle of a reading session, such that I end up missing some new messages.

At times these nice flags are predictable as a Las Vegas slot machine. I try to remember my last visit date and time and go from there. IMHO best to forget the flags.

Hmmm, OK, it's not just for me that they behave unpredictably, then. All I think I really want from Web-based discussion forum software is to make the target of the hyperlink to view a thread change whenever there is a new message. I.e., include somewhere in the hyperlink the number of messages in the thread so far. Then the Web site doesn't have to track whether a thread is new (or relatively new) to me or not at all. Instead, my browser's display of visited vs. non-visited hyperlinks would indicate to me whether the thread has changed state since I last read it. As it stands now, threads change color based on whether I've ever read the thread, but there could be new messages in the thread and I'd have to depend on the folder representing the thread being red to know that, or track when I last read FlyerTalk and compare that time against the last post timestamp on the thread.

Oh well, it seems most discussion forum software think that they need to try to do something more clever but works more poorly in practice. (Yes, I recognize that a problem with the browser hyperlink color schema is that it then doesn't work very well to read FlyerTalk from multiple browsers. But I don't think that works terribly well with the glowing light bulbs / red folders, either.)

Anyone from FlyerTalk reading this?

Hello everybody. Yep, I'm reading this. Since I didn't write the code and a third party developer did I'll need a little time to pull it apart and look at it. It shouldn't take long, but I have a business trip coming up and I'll be gone until next Tuesday. I'll do my best to answer this question to everyone's satisfaction as soon as I return on the 13th.

I'm thinking of rewriting the routines that take care of this sort of thing so that it makes more sense but I can't guarantee anything as of yet. Any feedback as to how you would like to see this particular function work?

Thanks for your feedback.

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ThanX...
Michael at WebFlyer

arturo jus hit rifrish buton befour he leaf talkflier. thin arturo kno prezactly whin he las bin ther.

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loving, caring, honest, intelligent, empathetic, creative, and giving.

Michael at WebFlyer: what I had in mind was that the hyperlink to read a thread could be generated with some additional "query" fields (which your Web server will ignore anyway, although the additional query fields may appear in the logs). For example, the URL for reading this thread ends in forum/Forum72/HTML/000159.html. If the URL were forum/Forum72/HTML/000159.html?msgs=5 instead, then my browser would display it in the unvisited color (default blue) instead the visited color (default purple). And if as soon as I actually post this reply, the server were to generate the URL with the query "?msgs=6" in the future, then my browser would yet again display it with the unvisited color.

Similarly, if the URL to visit the FlyerTalk Technical Problems forum were to include the number of threads and messages, then my browser would do the right thing. Clearly you already have that information easily accessible somewhere on your Web server, since you display the number of topics and posts in tabular format in the listing of all forums. It appears that you use a CGI script to display a forum anyway, and that CGI script already uses query syntax. You should be able to add the number of messages and the number of threads to the existing query fields without giving your CGI script any problems, I'm sure it will ignore any fields it doesn't already understand.

And while I have your ear, I have a request for enhancement from last year, which is to provide a one-lick search (analogous to search.cgi?action=getdaily) which would return all threads updated since yesterday 12:01am, so that it becomes possible to check FlyerTalk on a once-a-day basis, but with no limitations on when I visit during the day, and not miss any new or updated threads, without having to go visit a gazillion forums individually.

arturo sey wat he sey? arturo jus heet rifrish buton an git hes date.

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loving, caring, honest, intelligent, empathetic, creative, and giving.

arturo, you're a fine one to say "wat he sey?"