New message indicators (Page 1 of 2)

Yes, it's possible, but the solution to the problem is quite ugly and very "unPunBBish". The solution is to keep track of all topics that a certain user has read. This can be done via the database or via cookies. The latter is the most common solution. You store a serialized array of topic IDs and timestamps in a cookie and check against that array to see if a topic has been read or not. The problem with cookies is that they won't help if people browse the forums from different computers and the fact that a cookie must not be larger than 4 KB according to some RFC. A few hundred topics and 4 KB is no problem to reach. That means you have to prune the array now and then.

The database solution is therefore preferable, but the downside with that is that you need to do more database interaction (which you always want to avoid).

The bottom line is that implementing is isn't difficult, it's just too damned ugly. We fight to keep PunBB simple and in that fight, some features have to be discarded :)

Yeah, that's what I do. I hit 'Show new posts since last visit' and then shift-click '[ New posts ]' one topic one at a time.

would you consider releasing you cms/portal for all to use? or could you let us know how you did it please? this is about one the most efficient and fastest sites i have ever been to.

You could make the new message thing optional in the next release and let the user deside if its to much mysql usages or not? Because I really love your forum. I only added the private message mod and the only thing that I miss is the new message system the way i like it to be database driven and accurate.

PunBB 1.2 doesn't use graphics for new posts. There is a div which provides the new post indicator. If there are new posts it has class="inew" otherwise it is class="inormal". Could you adapt your idea just to switch the classes?

BTW: I think I came up with something similar many moons ago, I will try to find it.

EDIT:

Here it is, not the same as your idea but similar thought process at work.
http://punbb.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=4338&p=1

I just took a look at 1.2's markup... It's technically possible to implement this entirely in JavaScript. PunBB doesn't have to add any additional id attributes.

Well, I'd sure be interested in seeing something like this in action. I'm no JavaScript wiz thought. Anyone up for a test?

Viewtopic has changed since your version of the beta. the <a href> has gone with the id being put on the containing div for the post. The id now has a "p" in front of it for obvious reasons so post id's are now

<div id="p8" class="blockpost roweven">

That should make life easier I would have thought.

I don't think there is a copy on public view but that is the only change which is relevant to what you are doing.

I've been thinking about this a lot - It's almost a 'must have' feature for me. Personally I dont like the cookies / javascript, as they're client side. If you move to another computer / browser, all the new topic info is lost, not to mention browser compatability. I am looking into doing this on server side at the moment, although cant predict the knock on effects this might have on page loading times and the like. The method behind my madness, is to store what would be cookies, server side just as small text files. Obviously these could be dynamicly gziped to and forth as a user logs in, therefore saving some space. This way restores cross browser compatability, if the user moves to another computer it will be fine too. The only thing is, to reduce space further I'd like to have the *cookie* store topics that have not been read, as storing topics that have been read will just use a lot of space over time. Possibly build this index of new topics into the *cookie* at login.

Opinions / comments?

No, I suggested that a central index is made of topics, in heindsight, this could just be taken from the database I guess. This index is written to the *cookie* when a user logs in. Obviously this needs a lot more thought, will post back in a few days with some solid specifications / initial implimentation.

lynx.