test

[Stephen Coates]

Quick reply test...... had to click on the icon under the post above, this box I am typing in was greyed out initially

That is one thing I find annoying in vB.

Will it be possible to mod it so you can just stick your post into it and post it like on the old forum?

I found the quick reply a bit confusing when I first used it on vB a while ago.

Nice forum BTW

[J T]

That is one thing I find annoying in vB.

Will it be possible to mod it so you can just stick your post into it and post it like on the old forum?

I found the quick reply a bit confusing when I first used it on vB a while ago.

Nice forum BTW

This has been mentioned too, Harrison is thinking it over. It can be done.

[Stephen Coates]

That would be good.

[Puni/Void]

Yup, have a 030 inside my trusty old Amiga 1200.

I'm using this avatar for nostalgic reasons though. Remember them from the 90's, as they were quite popular among hardcore Amiga users. People used this logo in demos as well, to the big joy of the audience at demo parties. All the PC people became very quiet when a big Intel Outside logo was presented on a big screen. Those were the days.

[Harrison]

That is one thing I find annoying in vB.

Will it be possible to mod it so you can just stick your post into it and post it like on the old forum?

I found the quick reply a bit confusing when I first used it on vB a while ago.

Nice forum BTW

The way the quick reply functions is actually built into the vB settings. You have the ability to switch it off, require the icon under one of the posts be clicked, or to just be able to use it without needing to first click anything.

I also agree that not needing to click on a quick reply post icon first and just being able to type a quick reply is easier than needing to first click the icon. But there is a reason for this feature...

vB allows you to view your topics in two ways, the standard linear nature we are all used to from the old board where each reply appears under the last, or a threaded view which those familiar with usenet and newsgroups will know and have used. Where one topic of discussion can branch off into different sub conversations. Replies to one post in the thread could continue in their own series of posts, whilst other threads can be posted the branch off from the original topic starting post, or another post further down the topic.

The reason for clicking on the quick reply icon on a post is so for the threaded view. It lets the forum know which post your are actually posting the reply to. So if you were to switch to the threaded view it would then appear under the correct branch of posts and under the actual posts you were replying too.

Personally I've never liked threaded forum structures as it can sometimes be hard and time consuming to naviagate up and down the different branches of a topic to try and read all of the posts and read everything posted. I much prefer the linear structure with posts all being one under the other and references to previous posts being in the forum of quotes.

But others may prefer the threaded view so I'm not sure if we should disable the click icon to post a quick reply feature. Doing so means all posts are automatically placed at the end of the thread, regardless of the post you were actually posting the reply to.

Would be interesting to hear everyones views on this. Personally I would disable the need to click the icon so that we can all just type a reply in the quick reply box. What do you all think?

The other advantage of needed to click the icon to activate the quick reply is spamming. If the box is automatically open to use then auto scripts may be able to quickly exploit this and start auto spamming replies throughout the forum. It's a small risk though.

[Harrison]

As a way to demonstrate the threaded view switch this very topic to threaded view. You will be surprised to see how the threaded structure has linked the posts even for this one quite simple topic. It definitely proves that in a very big topic with hundreds of posts that it may be very useful to quickly follow a branch of a discussion within the topic. Something that doesn't always happen in a linear topic structure where replies to specific posts may appear a few posts after the initial post being replied to.

[Stephen Coates]

Have it so you can just enter the text.

also, what does

Have phun!

mean? That just came up on a page which I had to accept before posting this.

[Harrison]

Have it so you can just enter the text.

also, what does

Have phun!

mean? That just came up on a page which I had to accept before posting this.

It's one of the features of a new forum mod I just added that adds a forum rules page to the forum. You can now access forum rules from a link in the top menu bar and it has a feature so that when important rules are changed or added I can force everyone to have to agree with them before they can continue posting.

I've not changed the forum rules yet so they are currently just the default example rules that come with the mod. The real rules will be based on the ones we had in the old site's TOS.

[Harrison]

Testing new sig.

[Stephen Coates]

What's a phun though?