wharvey

In the old version of Flyertalk, you could always see how many current pages were in a thread... and you could click on the page you wanted to go to from the List of Threads page.

We seem to have lost that in this new version... for example, in the "Reputation" thread... I only see 1,2,3,4,5.... last page. In the previous version, I would have seen 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 (current number of pages).

Is there any way to bring this back?

William

CrazyOne

This is a good request. Often enough I want to click on the second or third to last page of a long thread because that many posts have been added to it since my last read. I've seen other boards that do something like the first few pages and the last few pages. I'll bet this is possible once they get some time to work on it.

Note that in the meantime you can manually edit the URL to any page you like. Here's an example URL for a multi-page thread:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showt...=309996&page=3

So you can edit that number at the end to the appropriate page. Not a big deal on a 3-page thread, but if it's a 50-page thread and you need page 30, that's the way to do it for now.

mymiles2go

I would also love to see the ability to see all pages listed. I like on really long threads to kinda skip around and hit random portions of the thread. Thanks!

wharvey

Bumping... any comments from the Technical Guru's?

William

dan at WebFlyer

We'll give that a shot and see how it holds up...

UPDATE: No go. It causes the screen in IE6 (WinXP) to stretch horizontally in order to show all page links, and anything over 20 or so pages makes the thread hard to read. I set the number of page links to 7. It should be showing 7 on either side of the current page, but it's not, so I'll look around for a fix.

Click the "View First Unread" link at the top of the thread you're in to go to the first new post in that thread.

CrazyOne

This only works if you are very quick with your browsing of FT. If I visit at the end of the day, after going all day without reading, and I take a long time to do it, the unread stuff will eventually go out of whack. Right now, for instance, the unread stuff is already out of whack. Only the posts in the last little while are considered unread for me. Unless I visit multiple times a day, that happens on every visit.

Canarsie

dan at WebFlyer, please use the Who Will Be The Next FlyerTalk Member To Post? An OMNI Game thread as the “guinea pig” with which to test and experiment.

Ever since you set the number of page links to 7, it has worked flawlessly for me. In fact, it has helped me tremendously in tallying the points of individual FlyerTalk members that post correct guesses to that thread, because as many as six pages could be added to that thread before I am able to tally the latest round of points and post the latest standings in that game.

I am currently using Netscape 7 in Macintosh System 9.2.2, although I also access FlyerTalk on Safari in Macintosh System OS X (10.2.8) and both Netscape 7 and Internet Explorer on Windows XP home, just for your information.

Thank you, dan at WebFlyer. I like the current setting!

Kiwi Flyer

Gee I hadnt even noticed that until you mentioned it. It is cool and should be plenty, except perhaps OMNI games

dan at WebFlyer

Whoops, I guess I didn't check it good enough... seems to work after all, which probably explains why I couldn't find a mention of it over at vBB's boards.

dan at WebFlyer

I haven't had that problem myself, either here or on other vBB boards I frequent. When I go to a particular thread that I haven't been to in a while, even if I've been browsing all day on other forums/threads, I still get the correct "newest" post from the last time I visited that thread.

CrazyOne

I dunno really. I remember thinking at first it was working pretty well, but now it seems less likely to hold the unread properly. I have no idea why that would be. (Why it would change, I mean. That part could be my imagination I guess, but I seem to remember it working better at first.) My usual browser is Safari, and I don't have any other vBBs that I frequent to compare it to. (The two other boards I read daily use phpBB and WebCrossing. A third I visit fairly often uses Invision. I could say I like variety in my BB systems but it's really just luck of the draw.)

Even now, as I read tonight, many unread threads are already no longer marked that way. I happened to read OMNI first tonight. Those were mostly marked, though when I got to Page 3 (viewing newest first) they were showing read already (even though I haven't been here since last night). Soon as I clicked over into some other boards like this one, only the threads new in the last hour or so are marked unread. I have subscribed to these forums, but these are not individual thread subscriptions.

It's not a big problem for me or anything. I can remember roughly when my last visit was and find what is new with no problem. But as soon as the system thinks these threads are read, there's not even a link to go to first unread post. I don't even use those links anyway (don't trust them), but I do like seeing the highlighted threads.

In my experience no board system can 100% do this properly except for WebCrossing. WebCrossing tracks right down to the post what you've read or not and always remembers even if you stop in the middle of a thread, quit out of the browser and log in from a different computer later. phpBB will show me unread threads and mark each one off as I read it, but if it sits too long it will time out, at which point everything will be marked read when I come back. If I quit browser with phpBB everything will get marked read. Essentially what your vBB setup is doing right now is the same as I just said for phpBB, except the time at which it will consider everything read is much shorter. And I could have sworn it wasn't that way originally. I remember being impressed at its read vs unread remembering capability.

QuietLion

I use shift+Click to open new forums and I experience the loss of "unreadness". Perhaps there is no problem if I navigate without opening new windows. I use the latest IE.

QL

CrazyOne

If I had to do this without new windows (or new tabs in my case, because I'm always using a browser with that feature) I'd go crazy, er, crazier. I'd never be able to scan/read as much as I do now.

Anyway, that doesn't seem to be the problem. I've been popping new tabs like usual during this session, and everything's been fine. I think it's a time issue. Based on this afternoon's session, I'm thinking perhaps after one hour it times out and loses the read/unread info, regardless of your continued activity. (I read through everything I wanted to look at, and at the very end they started no longer appearing unread properly. It was I believe just over an hour from when I started.) I wonder if that setting can be changed anywhere?

QuietLion

Mine happens after mere minutes.

QL

dan at WebFlyer

It looks like the default setting for the session cookie is 15 minutes. I just doubled that, so let's see if it helps any with the read/unread issues.