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Author Topic: Feasibility - date order / reverse chronological listing of posts  (Read 8184 times)

Weaver

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[I'm convinced I have mentioned this before, please do accept my apologies - pain and drugs again.]

Feature request - Is the following feasible? I do understand our leader and team have enough to do.

I’d love to have a really fast way of toggling reversing the chronological order in which posts in a thread are displayed. Normally I have things set to ‘show most recent post at the top’. I sometimes want to go to an old thread and read from the beginning, so I want to read that thread in normal chronological order, but to achieve that means digging around in settings making the change, saving it, getting back to where I was because I forgot to open a second window, and then later going back into settings a second time to put things back.

Is there some trick I could use myself?

Is the forum's engine up to allowing any customisation so as to add a readily accessible UI element? (If our dev gods are feeling really bored.)
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Westie

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Re: Feasibility - date order / reverse chronological listing of posts
« Reply #1 on: January 22, 2018, 11:44:30 PM »

This may not work for you; but it works for me using Safari on an iPad:

I have saved the 'Look & Layout page' of my profile as a favourite. When I get to a thread that I want to change the order of, I
1. Open a new browser tab (which automatically shows the favourites)
2. Select the "Profile" page saved previously and select the order I want the thread displayed as
3. Select the previous tab, showing the thread I'm interested in
4. Hit the "reload" thingy, and voila!  ;D

When I've done with that thread I select the "Profile" tab and revert to previous settings.

It might be rather inelegant, but it works for me!
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kitz

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Re: Feasibility - date order / reverse chronological listing of posts
« Reply #2 on: January 23, 2018, 12:10:18 AM »

Unfortunately whilst there is a quick toggle for thread view, there isn't any option for posts within a thread and that is set within the user's profiles preferences.

SMF is basically software that interacts with the database and I am restricted to what is there is the CORE.   You can make cosmetic changes such as themes fairly easily, but that's more to do with colours and images.    Whilst it is not impossible to change anything you want within the core, problems arise when security updates and patches are released and they won't install to certain modified code.   I've been burnt before with this several times thinking I was clever by making highly adaptive customisation.   It took a long time to sort and I ended up having to reinstall a fresh brand new version from scratch and import the old database.  I vowed never to do that again.   Even more recently I got caught out with an approved SMF mod that stopped a security patch despite it being packaged. 

So whilst I could tell porkies and say its impossible, instead I shall tell the truth which is that it is possible, but it would mean manual coding in parts of code where I wouldn't even begin to know where to look (it contains massive amounts of code)  and then after I'd done that, there would be the strong probability it would affect any future updates, because they wont install if it detects any changes in the CORE code.

-----

I tend to have newest post as last set.   That way its easy to read the whole thread chronologically if you want..  but by default clicking on the 'new' button will always take you to the first unread post if there are any new additions to the thread.
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Weaver

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Re: Feasibility - date order / reverse chronological listing of posts
« Reply #3 on: January 23, 2018, 12:19:28 AM »

> but by default clicking on the 'new' button will always take you to the first unread post if there are any new additions to the thread.

I'm being dense here Kitz? (just taken three different types of pills.)
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banger

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Re: Feasibility - date order / reverse chronological listing of posts
« Reply #4 on: January 23, 2018, 02:45:12 AM »

New button on Thread title on thread list. Does that help?
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Tim
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kitz

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Re: Feasibility - date order / reverse chronological listing of posts
« Reply #5 on: January 23, 2018, 02:48:09 AM »

It looks like this
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jelv

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Re: Feasibility - date order / reverse chronological listing of posts
« Reply #6 on: January 23, 2018, 08:42:02 AM »

I've never under stood why anyone would want to use the reverse date order option! It only works sensibly if there has only been ONE new reply since you last visited the topic. If there is more than one you have to scroll down to find the first unread post and then read back up the topic. If there's more than a page worth of new replies you have to go to the next page(s) and then read backwards. If any of the replies take up the full screen you are scrolling up and down - all in all an absolute pain!

Using the link beside the topic title as the others suggested works perfectly in all circumstances (any number of posts over any number of pages) and you always are just reading down the screen.
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jelv

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Re: Feasibility - date order / reverse chronological listing of posts
« Reply #7 on: January 23, 2018, 08:53:59 AM »

Kitz: It's not uncommon for people to have not found the new button functionality (I have it at the back of my mind that I may have told you about it on the PUG forums many, many, many years ago).

If there a simple way which doesn't mess anything up or cause upgrade issues you could add the following to the top of all forum pages listing topics (or all pages if that is too difficult) - maybe outside the forum container?

Quote
Click to go to first unread post in a topic (logged in users only)
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d2d4j

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Re: Feasibility - date order / reverse chronological listing of posts
« Reply #8 on: January 23, 2018, 09:26:50 AM »

Hi

Sorry slightly off topic but you could try Tapatalk

I use this and in most part, I like it and prefer it over accessing from a browser

You can instantly see any new post, follow threads etc

If you click into a thread, you can either go back/forward 1 page or goto start of thread/end of thread with a single touch

I use the free version which displays ads periodically but not an issue to me

I hope you don’t mind me putting Tapatalk forward

Many thanks

John
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Weaver

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Re: Feasibility - date order / reverse chronological listing of posts
« Reply #9 on: January 23, 2018, 09:34:33 AM »

Ah! I never new that was a link or a button. It's a clickable link? I just thought it was an annotation - a marker meaning that there is new stuff to be seen in the the thread.

All these years and it has never occurred to me to click on it because to me it doesn't look like a link (and 'new' isn't a verb).

I think I will probably just forget about reverse chronological order altogether now I know about this. Many thanks for that excellent guidance!
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jelv

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Re: Feasibility - date order / reverse chronological listing of posts
« Reply #10 on: January 23, 2018, 10:42:15 AM »

Ah! I never new that was a link or a button.

I only found it by accident. There's a lot of links on many websites that is not immediately obvious they are links (e.g. the breadcrumbs on these forums, or the heading on a quoted post), you only find them by wandering the mouse over them and seeing when the cursor changes shape.
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jelv

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Re: Feasibility - date order / reverse chronological listing of posts
« Reply #11 on: January 23, 2018, 11:22:13 AM »

@Kitz

I'd bet that Weaver wasn't the only person who didn't realise new was a link. I wonder if in addition to my suggestion above a simple change of the image to add a little arrow may help.
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Westie

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Re: Feasibility - date order / reverse chronological listing of posts
« Reply #12 on: January 23, 2018, 12:03:20 PM »

Ah! I never new that was a link or a button.

Neither did I!  :blush:

... the breadcrumbs on these forums

What are these?

Quote
you only find them by wandering the mouse over them and seeing when the cursor changes shape.

Since I use an iPad, this facility is not available to me.  :no:
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Ronski

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Re: Feasibility - date order / reverse chronological listing of posts
« Reply #13 on: January 23, 2018, 01:21:59 PM »

I didn't realise that the new icon was a link either.
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jelv

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Re: Feasibility - date order / reverse chronological listing of posts
« Reply #14 on: January 23, 2018, 02:36:45 PM »

... the breadcrumbs on these forums

What are these?

See attached (the last takes you to the first post in the topic).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breadcrumb_(navigation)

[Moderator edited to fix the broken link.]
« Last Edit: January 23, 2018, 06:18:13 PM by burakkucat »
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