[ Closed ] New Post Indicator Management (volunteers?)

Here's a screenshot...

[Edit: image removed, see the new screenshot instead]

Very nice. I will definately be checking this out when I get back from work.

I really like this idea. Good Stuff.

Nice, I'll try it out.

hmm. ok...
BTW i've made smth same but at server-side and not using any timeout schemes http://punbb.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=5297
its not very pretty, but i'll improve it, when i add it to my forum
i don't like huge javascripts especially on slow computers.. yeah..

one thing that would be cool is if instead of just making them as old topics it marked them in a new colour so you could see what was new even if you've read it... since i actually quite like the PunBB way of new topics now i'm used to it

I just made a slight change to the script (it's still available at the same location - new_posts.js).

The script was assigning a punhover class to rows so they'd change color on mouseover...

[Edit: image removed from server]

...but I don't think it's appropriate for a new-indicator-management script to assign unrelated onmouseover/onmouseout events. (This should be a completely separate add-on.)

DIFFERENT TOPIC: In the screenshot above, I've declared STRONG { font-weight : normal }. But instead of this, I'm going to have the script alter the assigned font-weight of the timed-out-but-unread messages so they mirror the default or CSS-declared STRONG style.

I have an updated--and much improved--version of the script online now (new_posts.js). I decided to scrap the "STRONG-style copying" idea and do a proper rebuild of the "tclcon" DIV in the node tree. So instead of looking like a <strong> tag, it actually is a <strong> tag. Also, the <strong> is removed for messages marked as read.

[Edit: image removed, see the new screenshot instead]

Additionally, the "There are new posts" text in the "nosize" DIV is added/removed as appropriate. All of this DOM-node manipulation can be confirmed in Firefox by choosing: View > Page Style > No Style. And persistent cookies are currently turned off until the script supports reply-number tracking for marked-as-read posts.

I'd be happy if it were someday part of the core but I'm content with it being simply an add-on as well.

&action=new gets the latest post you haven't read or if you have read them the last posts, so for timed out posts it will always be the last post (i think)

Updated version...

The new version is available at the same location as before (new_posts.js).

Here are some of the new changes:

- Last-post tracking has been added for posts that haven't timed out. All new posts are now accurately tracked and marked as such.

- A persistent cookie is used to prevent marked-as-read posts from coming back between short multiple visits.

-  To keep things visually consistent, the script generates a [Last post] link using action=last. I wanted to add a genuine [New posts] link for unread-but-timed-out messages but doing this reliably with the given markup just isn't possible.

- The script now also suppresses the update flicker that was sometimes apparent (especially in IE). The style sheet method used to do this should work in all common browsers except Opera. If you have Opera, you may still see a slight flicker as the script re-writes the new post indicators.

Question: One of the last things I need to add is detection for the punbb_cookie. The script needs to determine if the browser is logged in as a user or as a guest. Can anyone tell me what I should be looking for to determine this? I've looked at the unescaped cookie data but I can't readily see what I need to be testing for.

This detection is necessary to prevent odd behavior for users that have turned off the "Save username and password between visits" option.

After this user/guest detection is implemented, I believe the script is pretty much done. If I don't hear of any errors or strangeness, I'll package it up as a proper mod in a week or so.

Rickard, Connorhd: Thanks for the info. I'll be posting this as a packaged mod in a few minutes.