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5 votes

IP.Board 3.1.0 Dev Update: Topic Preview

Posted by Matt, in Beta, 3.1.0 18 February 2010 · 401 views

We read virtually every piece of feedback we receive, even if we don't reply and we often see the same requests coming up. The ability to 'preview' the topic by viewing an excerpt from the first post is often requested and we've added this into IP.Board 3.1.

We've made it a little more useful by also including the last time you read a topic (if applicable) and the number of unread posts so you can quickly review how much activity has taken place since you last read the topic.

Posted Image

When you 'mouse over' a topic entry, you'll see a little 'pop-up' icon. Clicking this loads an excerpt from the first post along with some data underneath. This is very useful for moderators who can quickly review un-approved topics and well as being useful for normal members who can quickly decide whether they want to open the topic or not.

Technical Details:
- Icon appears for moderators / admins and normal members. If there are no moderator tools, it shows on its own.
- When you mouse over the cell, the icon is "faded" until you mouse over the actual icon.
- Data is loaded via Ajax to reduce mark-up required in the templates.
- The post excerpt is stripped of all BBCode and mark-up to prevent it breaking out of the pop-up.

This feature adds a little more functionality and polish to the forum index allowing you to perform your daily routine a little quicker and a little easier.

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Lewis P
Feb 18 2010 06:45 PM

.Wolfie, on 18 February 2010 - 11:42 PM, said:

Next, having it per group could be very beneficial. Enable it for admins and mods, but disable it for everyone else (for example). On an extremely busy board, this might cut down on resource usage. After all, having 1000 people online at once (which some boards have), if a lot of them are doing previews, then that's a major resource hog.

It's no more a resource hog than actually opening the topic.

Wolfie
Feb 18 2010 06:47 PM

Lewis P, on 18 February 2010 - 06:45 PM, said:

It's no more a resource hog than actually opening the topic.

It is when someone can click (or hover) on multiple topics in a few mere seconds. At least with opening it, there is the delay of it loading and then they go back to the topic list to look at the next one.

AtariAge
Feb 18 2010 06:53 PM

.Wolfie, on 18 February 2010 - 05:47 PM, said:

I have to agree with this, you can preview several topics in very short order relative to how long it takes to go into a topic, read the topic and go onto the next one. However, I imagine there are quite a few more queries involved in opening a full topic as opposed to just pulling information about a single post in the thread to display in the Topic Preview popup, that certainly balances it a bit.

I would not be upset if a user group permission appeared for this feature. At the very least it would be nice to prevent Guests from using this.

..Al

Charles
Feb 18 2010 06:55 PM

I wouldn't be too worried about that personally. It's no different than people opening multiple topics in many browser tabs at once. I do it all the time.

AtariAge
Feb 18 2010 06:56 PM

Charles, on 18 February 2010 - 05:55 PM, said:

I wouldn't be too worried about that personally. It's no different than people opening multiple topics in many browser tabs at once. I do it all the time.

As do I.

dr. Jekyll
Feb 18 2010 07:10 PM

AtariAge, on 18 February 2010 - 05:43 PM, said:

2) Will this work in Search/View New Content/Active Content queries? If not, it's of limited functionality since many of my members use View New Content (and other queries) to browse posts. I personally rarely do my normal browsing by diving into individual forums.
l

That will be great, especially if you give possibility for Mass Moderation also on "View New Content".

Moderators will love having the possibility to see content and apply mass moderation directly from "view new content"

Wolfie
Feb 18 2010 07:18 PM

Charles, on 18 February 2010 - 06:55 PM, said:

I wouldn't be too worried about that personally. It's no different than people opening multiple topics in many browser tabs at once. I do it all the time.

AtariAge, on 18 February 2010 - 06:56 PM, said:

As do I.

You resource hogs!

AtariAge
Feb 18 2010 07:21 PM

dr. Jekyll, on 18 February 2010 - 06:10 PM, said:

I've wanted the ability to do this for quite some time (especially the ability to mass move posts on search results), but that's another discussion..

..Al

MLDxModZ
Feb 18 2010 07:24 PM

Always great to see IPS answering requests by the community in order to improve such an elegant and cheap product. It is times like this that remind me of why I purchased bulletin software from IPS to begin with.

Logan
Feb 18 2010 07:49 PM

That's a good idea... moderating features on the view new content page... that would be awesome! (would be useful when users accidentally post multiple topics, and for mass spam topics).

bfarber
Feb 18 2010 08:25 PM

.Wolfie, on 18 February 2010 - 06:42 PM, said:

...snip...

Wolfie - can you help us clear something up? How many suggestions *exactly* are you conveying in your first post here? Just want to be positive.

Brett B
Feb 18 2010 08:28 PM

Matt, on 18 February 2010 - 01:14 PM, said:

Al,

I had considered that actually. The backend code has the ability to return the first unread post already. Just needs some JS to tie it together.

You might as well just display a random post from the topic, in my opinion. At least the first post *usually* sets the tone for the topic.

Anyway, this'll be a nice addition for those who wanted it

. As always, I love that when you guys implement popular features you never include the bare minimum, but always make it worthy of inclusion

AtariAge
Feb 18 2010 08:37 PM

Brett B, on 18 February 2010 - 07:28 PM, said:

You might as well just display a random post from the topic, in my opinion. At least the first post *usually* sets the tone for the topic.

This is true, but once you've read the topic, seeing the first post again and again is much less useful. At that point you'd want to see the first new post or last post in the thread. Ideally if you hadn't looked at a topic yet, you'd see the first post, since that would be your first "unread" post. After you read the thread, it'll then display the first unread post on subsequent topic previews. I still feel it would be worthwhile to make this a user setting, as some people may always want to see the first post, others will find it useful to see the first unread post or the last post.

..Al

AtariAge
Feb 18 2010 08:37 PM

bfarber, on 18 February 2010 - 07:25 PM, said:

Wolfie - can you help us clear something up? How many suggestions *exactly* are you conveying in your first post here? Just want to be positive.

I'm glad I numbered the suggestions in my initial post.. :whistle:

..Al

phinsup
Feb 18 2010 08:43 PM

Oh I like this, I this a lot.

abney317
Feb 18 2010 09:03 PM

awesome... good feature

Glumbo
Feb 18 2010 09:37 PM

Cool job

Wolfie
Feb 18 2010 11:50 PM

bfarber, on 18 February 2010 - 08:25 PM, said:

Wolfie - can you help us clear something up? How many suggestions *exactly* are you conveying in your first post here? Just want to be positive.

I have bolded/underlined my thoughts. The first is an opinion on the placement of the preview button/icon. Second is a suggestion (in reference to the hover/click debate). The third (next) is a comment about the per-group idea, along with another suggestion on an alternative to a per-group option. Last a comment about the preview being for the first post, last post or the 'first new' post.

.Wolfie, on 18 February 2010 - 06:42 PM, said:

Here are a few of my thoughts...

First, I like the idea of a preview button/icon being on the left, as it would get a members attention and they would more likely click on it and then when they realize what it is, they'd use it.

Second, what about a "mouseover preview" when hovering over the icon? That way it's not a mouse-over when getting ready to click the topic itself, but someone wouldn't have to go down the list with click-click-click. Instead just move the mouse over and it's preview-preview-preview.

Next, having it per group could be very beneficial. Enable it for admins and mods, but disable it for everyone else (for example). On an extremely busy board, this might cut down on resource usage. After all, having 1000 people online at once (which some boards have), if a lot of them are doing previews, then that's a major resource hog.

As gutterape mentioned, could disable it for guests, making it a benefit of registering. Could also be seen as an incentive to participate, if new members can't use it but those who have shown some activity get promoted and can use it. At the very least, an ACP setting with "Off | Admin & Mods | Registered members | All" would work. I agree that charging to have it would be a bit of a cheesy move.

Finally, the idea of first/new/last post previewing sounds a bit much but I can see the usefulness in it, so that would be a nice touch to it as well.

Matt
Feb 19 2010 01:53 AM

As the data is loaded by ajax (which is very light, just two queries after ajax init both of which are very fast and use indexes) you really don't want it onmouseover as there is bound to be a short lag while the data is requested, parsed and returned. Even on a fast server this may be 1/2 second or so by the time the browser shows the pop-up. If it was onmouseover, then you'd roll over and it would seem like nothing happened. So you'd roll over another, this would hide the first pop-up before it was shown then attempt to load another one.

In a very early dev build, we had the user pop-up open on mouseover and it happened exactly as I described. It was quite confusing.

I would wait until you can actually use the feature then work out if any further enhancements are required. It's quite a minor feature, lets not turn it into its own application.

Per user/per group are all not required in my opinion. There is no concern with resource usage. It's takes much fewer resources than a quick edit or even using the user pop-up and no one has requested that this is made into a per-group/per-user setting. It's just part of the interface.

Finally, yes - it is very generic. I made it that way so it can be used elsewhere such as the search results page.