Jump to content


Welcome to IPS!

Feel free to browse our community to get a feel for how our community software operates. Post in the pre-sales forum with any questions you have before purchasing or use the Test Posting forum to post a few messages yourself! You can also get a free demo to try the IPS Community Suite yourself.

Already an active IPS client?

Login with the same email address and password you use for the client area to access client-only areas.





Photo * * * * * 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.




I love it! :)
Looks great to me. Buttons on right so they don't move around based on length of thread title, no annoying mousovers, but information can be gathered about post #1 of a thread. I never assume what a thread is really about based on thread title.

Some threads are *huge* and that alleviates the need to open threads and wait for the page to load, especially with content hosted elsewhere such as photobucket pictures.

I'm not sure the average forum would want to disable it, either on a per user, per group, or entirely, does not seem distracting to me. Although as mentioned some would find those additional options of use. My forum members get more confused every time the get new options. But we are a low tech forum :)


I await the "When its Ready ™" moment.
Double post, please delete this post.
Just a thought - with skin logic and such, wouldn't it be relatively easy to "enable/disable" on a per group basis? Just provide some sample code in a resource article - can't be more than a couple lines.


Looks good :)
Just a thought - with skin logic and such, wouldn't it be relatively easy to "enable/disable" on a per group basis? Just provide some sample code in a resource article - can't be more than a couple lines.


Looks good :)

Wilford Tibbetts, on 20 February 2010 - 06:58 AM, said:

Excellent addition! Can't wait to try it out when IP.3.1 is released. :D
Can't wait to try everything out when IPB 3.1 is released... :thumbsup:
Nice!
Just another voice to make it easier to switch this to the topic line vs an icon. Or if you're set on using the icon approach then at least make it a setup option to switch to topic line? I'm on a lot of vbulletin forums and they all allow you to preview the topic when you hover over the topic line and that seems to be the most intuitive way to do it.
+1 for "hover" behaviour switch too.

February 2012

S M T W T F S
   1234
56789 10 11
12131415161718
19202122232425
26272829   

Latest Visitors

Search My Blog