I was looking at posts on a thread on the test forum and switched to threaded view. While the threaded menu appeared and listed all the posts correctly, when I selected one of these threads only it appeared and any direct parent post.

It's my experience of threaded posts that you still get to see all posts in the thread even if you select a child post - is that not right?

For example, I may want to see a child post two levels down, but then I may want to scroll up and down to see what else is there.

Also threaded format I seem to recall has most recent posts at the top - or have I gone mad?

Hi Liam,

Many thanks for your comments. Would anyone else like to see Liam's suggestions. I'm holding back from modifying anything to much to ensure we don't introduce any new problems.

If the general consensus agrees with Liam this will be reviewed before the v4.0 release

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I'll be having a look at how other popular boards have implemented threaded topics. This will certainly be reviewed if it appears the percentage of others are doing things very differently

Explore our products...
http://demos.instantasp.co.uk/

I'll comment on my own post then

I was wrong about the order - you are right in how it is displayed right now. We used threaded with great success for five years - it is great that you can select a post within a thread, but you still need to then be able to scroll up and down and see ALL messages in the whole thread.

I will give you a simple example of why - let's say a thread has three posts made to it by three people. Then ten people reply to the first poster. If I click on reply number ten, your current system allows me to see the ten replies and the very first post made. The second and third posters who replied to the main post aren't currently available. They should be. It's always been that way with threaded forums - you just chuck them a level up, but they still appear.

Cheers.

Liam

Hi Ryan,

Just some input on the threaded view that I've been using for about 5 years now (as a webmaster on my own page). I use ubbthreads for infopop which has good and simple implementation of the threaded mode. The product is build around it and it works well. Heres a view that show that implementation: http://www.ubbcentral.com/boards/showthreaded.php/Cat/0/Number/41356/page/0/vc/1

But the best implementation out there is the Invision Power Board. Here a view that show that implementation:http://forums.invisionpower.com/index.php?showtopic=159060&mode=threaded (the link to the author in list is a mistake though - rookies will end up with profiles instead of posts the first time they use it, so dont implement that "feature").

Notice that ubbthreads only shows 1 post at a time, where the Power Board shows it a bit like you've implemented it - nice going ryan But also notice that *none* of them show the thread starter post all the time. This has to be dropped in your implementation, since it will bug the h.... out of regular users - they can remember the context and dont need to be reminded.

One word of warning - *dont* look at the vbulletin implementation when it comes to threaded mode. While it most probably is the best flat mode php board around the threaded mode is a draaaaag to use - this product is *not* up to speed in this regard (yes - i've also got a vbulletin license). So take your cues from the ubbthread and powerboard products.

One of the most important thing when it comes to threaded view is read persistance (post tracking). How important really comes as an surprise to most board makes. For example it was a surprise to the vBulletin guys who still has not gotten with the program but has made the steps to release the functionallity fix soon (read here: http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=104491) and it even had the power to antagonize some of the regular ubbthreads guys up when infopop couldnt get it right in their 6.5 release (for example here: http://www.ubbcentral.com/boards/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/41484/an/0/page/1#41484). So get this right if you havent already!

Well, thats my 2 cents.

Tried your beta 4.0 btw and was very impressed. Nice job ryan

/Tim 

Wow - Many thanks Tim. I'll be reviewing your comments very soon

Your kind words are greatly appreicated


Kindest Regards,

Ryan Healey
Director / Developer

Explore our products...
http://demos.instantasp.co.uk/

I give your board software high marks. You're doing many things right.

However, I've yet to find any truly usable "threaded" (or "tree") view outside of WebBoard (which lacks so much else in usability). Take a look at this link:

http://boards.argos.net/WB/default.asp?action=10&boardid=5&fid=462&style=WebBoard

I can open the threaded view on the left (like the classic "email" or "newreader" application), open and close threads by clicking on the "+" buttons, easily see the context of messages in the "big" picture, I can easily sort the display - and, most importantly, I can click on a message and it simply scrolls to that message in a thread, without me losing the rest of the conversation.

I think this is the implementation to strive for.

Best Regards,
Andy Schmidt

Hope your very well. I completely agree. I've had it down for a while now to review / improve the threaded view for topics. I appreciate the link and feedback. You'll certainly see this feature improve soon based on all your feedback. Sincerely appreicated.

I do like the treeview idea with WebBoard. We could re-use the ajax based tree control we developed for InstantKB.NET v2.0 to provide a similar feature.  We'll look into this for sure. 

If you have any further comments or suggestions don't hesitate to respond.


Kindest Regards,

Ryan Healey
Director / Developer

Explore our products...
http://demos.instantasp.co.uk/