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New Posts, mark read/unread

RichardJ
19-Tanzanite

New Posts, mark read/unread

When you are on the Mathcad home page there is no indication of which subforums contain new messages since the last time I logged on (or the last time I looked at that forum - either would work). There also seems to be no way to mark threads/posts read or unread to keep track of what I have looked at. Are we goging to get these features? I consider the first one in particular to be essential.

18 REPLIES 18

I agree. Without it I won't be using the forum.

I bookmark the 'show new threads' for any forum I participate in, then navigate away from there. If I can't get there quickly it just isn't worth my while!

Philip

ELSID
4-Participant
(To:Philip.Oakley)

I've been away for a bit and just realized the change. This is confussing and NOT user friendly. PTC, new do-dats and "spiffy", but if it's not functional, no one will use this forum and you will loose people. Remember ...KISS. I am just backtracking on the old collab for the unread items. Very easy! This functionality is a must

I agree as well.

Also, in case it comes up Mona, I hope the following point can be communicated: this complaint is not trivial.

It can be expected that any change will engender grumbling among the users. I imagine software engineers hear it every time they roll out a new and improved version of any software. I think that in some cases the engineers have a right to shrug off the complaints, as real progress has to involve changes somewhere and complaints about change itself aren't particularly valid. (Customer service reps can't ignore the complaints, of course!)

Please point out, however, that complaints about marking posts read/unread and separating out the new posts from the old are in a different class. This isn't grumbling about a menu item being reshuffled to a different place or a different design motif. This is about actual forum usage. There are thousands of posts on these bulletin boards - if we cannot quickly identify the ones that are new since we last viewed the board how can we possibly sort through them?

Search tools are a non-starter. I couldn't possibly do a date search that would be relevant. First, I'd have to keep track of when I last looked. Second, that wouldn't work either since I don't finish every new post at one sitting. Most of the time I take the new posts in chunks. I catch up on a couple of threads, go do something else, then come back for more. No way I could tailor a text or date search that would take the place of read/unread messages.

Certainly folks have worked hard to preserve the old content (extremely important - thank you), allow for file uploads (equally critical - thanks again), keep the original forum structure (OK), and allow for easier message formatting for those of us non-Gutmans that prefer not to remember HTML tags

But without the ability to quickly separate the new from the old I would waste way too much time simply deciding whether I did or did not read each particular discussion.

- Guy

mzeftel
1-Newbie
(To:GuyB)

Guy,

We are working on getting new flags to work better on this new site. Currently you do have to go into each forum. However, you can set up your view to show most recent discussiosn on the top, which is how I saw your posting here. Click on the button that says Need Help? and there's a How To Customize Your View. We'll get the rest working better soon.

Actually search is much better for articles posted on the Mathcad Resource Center. The search is only for the Community here. The search on the Collab was getting very broken, due to the age of the database.

Keep posting and the kinks will be worked out.

Mona

IRstuff
3-Visitor
(To:mzeftel)

the "mark all posts as read" seems to be broken at the moment. When I clicked it, most, but not all, posts are unbolded. Also, the function does not appear to work on any page except Page 1

TTFN,

Eden

Don't feel persecuted; I've been looking for bold type ever since someone said that the new posts were in bold. Haven't seen any yet!

RichardJ
19-Tanzanite
(To:f.kohlhepp)

Fred Kohlhepp wrote:

Don't feel persecuted; I've been looking for bold type ever since someone said that the new posts were in bold. Haven't seen any yet!

The only way to see it (at least, the only way I have figured out) is to go to the discussions listing using the small icon shown below:

discussions.gif

Not exactly obvious I'm afraid!

TomGutman
1-Newbie
(To:GuyB)

GuyBeadie wrote:

and allow for easier message formatting for those of us non-Gutmans that prefer not to remember HTML tags

- Guy

I have nothing against a good input editor. But .... one based on scripting is slow. May not be noticeable for someone with a really fast modern machine, but I've got a rather old single core system. The delay is very noticeable, and vey annoying. A Java applet rather than Javascript (or VBScript) would perform much better.

Also, while there are all kinds of word processor formats available, I'm not writing that type of document. The formats I actually used HTML for are mostly not to be found (bold being the major exception). Technical, and specifically mathematical, text without superscripts and subscripts? Superscripts and subscripts (sometimes nested) are my most common HTML tags. Also missing are the named symbols, for Greek letters (I used π a lot) and mathematical operators. A good input editor suitable for generating mathematical expressions is greatly to be desired, but this editor is largely useless. It would be great if I were trying to duplicate Word documents (without special insertions, like equations), but that's not what I do in the forums.

About the only good thing is the quoting facility, which allows nice separation of the quoted text. Even that is limited by its insistence on quoting the entire message, rather than a selected subset.

PhilipOakley
5-Regular Member
(To:GuyB)

Guy Beadie wrote:

....

and allow for easier message formatting for those of us non-Gutmans that prefer not to remember HTML tags

But without the ability to quickly separate the new from the old I would waste way too much time simply deciding whether I did or did not read each particular discussion.

- Guy

I'm just back from an external visit. Guy sumarised it well. As did Tom for the editor (sorry can't quote him, I'm only allowed to be replying to one thread when quoting). Yes the script is [too] slow to load. I definately notice it.

You can use the >> icon, which then has a drop down list including 'quote' which insert's and empty quote box, but the rest of thread isn't listed so I can't copy Tom's bit about the slow script.


At the moment I have switched off all my automatic notifications. I now only get those for threads I've posted to, and I trimmed some of those too (especially if very old!).

Good content has good structure. Other wise it is just a sand pile. We are not working in a socially constructed environment, otherwise we'd all be on facebook

😉 😉 😉 [I'm not on facebook...]

The marking seems to be working now.

However, I get a duplicate listing in the recent postings display if the most recent posting is from me:

Duplicate listing.gif

there is also a difference in the threads displayed between the one above and the Mathcad-specific discussions display:

IRstuff
3-Visitor
(To:IRstuff)

Huh, it won't let me post two images in the same posting

Mathcad discussions.gif

So, the Matrix to Vector thread is missing, as is the Mark All Read thread

TTFN

RichardJ
19-Tanzanite
(To:IRstuff)

I think because it is not looking in the sub-communities when you are on the Mathcad page. That's a bug that should be easily fixed.

Kinda odd, yah think?

The higher level display can drill down to the subcommunities, but not the lower display.

RichardJ
19-Tanzanite
(To:IRstuff)

I am guessing that it's because you get to them in a different way. The lower level display (Mathcad) is on a tab, but the higher level display is accessed using the "Discussions" icon. So the code probably exists in two places, and only one got the fix.

There's yet another difference between the Mathcad thread display, and the Discussions thread display. In the Discussions display, you can click on the "7 minutes ago" in the right hand column, and it'll put you directly on that posting in the thread, but that option is not available in the Mathcad Content page, but it is available in the Mathcad Discussions page. It should be available on all pages with that display formatting.

TTFN

Eden,

Can you provide me both links to your example? I want to compare the Mathcad Content page and Mathcad Discussions page and see exactly what you see.

-Dan

http://communities.ptc.com/community/mathcad?view=all The Mathcad All Content page. Last Activity times are not clickable. This thread shows up on this page, but https://communities.ptc.com/thread/31930?tstart=0 does not

http://communities.ptc.com/community/mathcad?view=discussions The Mathcad Discussions page. Last Post times are clickable. This thread shows up on this page as well, but https://communities.ptc.com/thread/31930?tstart=0 does not

https://communities.ptc.com/threads/ The PTC Discussions page. Last Post times are clickable. This thread is not shown on this page, but https://communities.ptc.com/thread/31930?tstart=0 does appear

Overall, it appears that the Mathcad discussions page does not display any subcommunity content, while the PTC discussions page ONLY displays subcommunity content

TTFN

Dale_Rosema
23-Emerald III
(To:RichardJ)

Did we lose this functionality over the weekend? I noticed that all the modeling questions were green instead of grey. Then after reading those since Friday and refreshing, they stayed green and were not grey.

 

Also, the scroll bar disappears after awhile and you have to move the mouse to "wake it up" before you can scroll with the middle mouse button.

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