Re: SI format sucks
First I have to say I'm extremely impressed with how responsive you are, and the system you've built is both fast and reliable.
(1) automatically include the "RE:[topic]" as the first line in the editor when you reply to an "RE:". That one takes 5 minutes, but I need to work on getting the cursor to start in the right place (it wants to start before the RE).
There are actually two issues here. The first is a) creation of the topic/subject/title. The second is b) maintaining a topic.
a) The software strips out carriage returns and other formatting on initial posts, grabbing the first 80 characters, including characters not intended to be part of the subject by the author. This results in the board index showing somewhat random topics which differ from how the authors try to present the topics.
b) Replies have no continuity due to lack of subject, and also the same issues as a).
(2) keep track of unread messages in the database rather than relying on the browser. Trickier, but probably doable. If you hit "next 100", can I assume you've read all 100 messages? Or do you care only about messages that you click on individually or as part of "Replies (3)"?
Part is a nice to have feature for people who access with multiple machines/browsers, having history taken care of by SI. That is not a deficiency.
Where the software is deficient is it provides a different link depending on where the post is seen. If the post is seen by clicking on replies, one link is provided. If it is read from the index, then the the link is different. Browser history shows a link is read only for the exact link. Since the links are different, the browser does not know it has already been to the post when seeing the second link.
There is an engineering problem to resolving this because multiple replies (1 level) are shown when clicking on replies to the post, so there is not a one to one relationship. Seeing all replies is nice, and I'm willing to trade this off against just seeing one and having my browser history matching my reading history. Count me as a vote in favor of continuing to see multiple replies.
There is also a scalability issue when looking at indexing the entire database and who has read what. The full cure here could cost speed, and that might not be cost well spent.
(3) Full thread support. When you click on "Replies (3)", you would see not just the 3 immediate replies, but the entire thread (everything for that "RE"[topic]"). Offer to toggle between "flat view" or "hierarchical".
(4) In the flat thread view, by default you would start reading with the message you were at, but have an option to jump to the top of the thread (which is the parent of the message that had the first RE).
(5) in hierarchical view, you would need to view the entire thread at once. Ideally we would suppress messages that you have already read (assuming #2 is accomplished) by compressing those into a single expandable line.
Those would be great! Some threads can go into hundreds of replies, so size limitation (# of posts) is another consideration.
(6) better spellchecker. Do we need a spellchecker at all, since modern browsers already highlight misspellings?
I'm agnostic about the spelling function of the spellchecker. The spellchecker also acts as a message preview. Yet when the message is posted, the format is changed by the software, with the software stripping out some line breaks, indentations, etc.
7) How about support for rich text formatting or something similar for people's posts? This enables more visually appealing posts where information can be differentiated and expressed in a variety of ways.
8) Embedding additional file types (e.g. pdf, excel) is another nice to have feature. There are two subsets here. Updloading and then embedding, or embedding the file which is already located somewhere on the web. (e.g. pdfs for for various types of corporate documents, excel for BHI weekly industry rig reports or NE fleet status reports). |
