Apologies up front, but here are my observations.

First, I miss seeing the new threads in order of updating.  In other words, when I’m done reading a message, I remember going to the next un-read thread by a simple click.  Now we have to go back up to the top of the thread and select the forum and then the next thread.  Now they are arranged by the order in which they were created rather than the order created by the newest message.

Second, When entering a thread, all new messages were highlighted in some way in EZ Board.  I forget how it was done, but it was obvious that when we went to a thread in which messages had already been read, the new messages were identified in some way (bolded?).  I’ve been off for about 12 hours today and there are a whole lot of new messages in old threads.  The problem is that I have to read through old messages and struggle remember which ones I had read before engaging the new ones.

Third I use the RSS feed (not available on EZBoard as far as I know), but it just takes me to the top of each topic I select from the RSS drop down menu in my browser.  If the topic has 4 pages, RSS only takes me to the top of the first page.  I have to then go to the fourth page and then page down to the newest message.

Anyway, FWIW.

Edited for clarification

Oec’s first point is a biggie for me, as well.

Which is not to say I don’t appreciate the horse, even if it is missing a tooth or two.

Some time ago I inquired about all three of these and they were all beyond the ability of the forum module as it was coded--they simply hadn’t planned to do any of these things and the appropriate data markers didn’t exist for next threads, new posts, and pages.

I’ll go back and see if a new version is available that incorporates these, but I’m not hopeful.

These aren’t anything I can fix as they go way beyond PHP.

Thanks, Dave.  These are small things of little consequence.

The feature I miss most is the ability to see the posts in a thread while you’re replying to it. In Ezboard you could reply to particular posts, and under the reply box would be seen that post and all posts subsequent to it, extremely useful for checking details in posts as you were composing the reply.

Now we have simply a general Reply button, which brings up the Reply box and nothing else (Reply with Quote isn’t much better).

But, as implied above, swings and roundabouts.

The feature I miss most is the ability to see the posts in a thread while you’re replying to it. In Ezboard you could reply to particular posts, and under the reply box would be seen that post and all posts subsequent to it, extremely useful for checking details in posts as you were composing the reply.

Same here.

This may depend on your browser, but I find that I can, while composing a reply, hit the “Go back” arrow, read what is there (on the discussion page I had been reading) and then go forward again without losing my composed text.  If I branch off (for instance, click a link on the discussion page that takes me elsewhere) it’s all lost, but as long as I simply go back and forth in the trail of links that lead to the reply page, I’m OK.

So it’s not much of a problem to refer back to the page with the discussion while composing a reply.

As a workaround, you can use the Fast Reply button. It opens at the bottom of the page and you can scroll up and down the thread as you work on your answer. You don’t get a “Preview” function, but you can take care of that by using Copy or Cut to grab your reply after you’ve finished composing it and then hit the Post Reply or Quote buttons and Pasting to that for finishing touches. I rarely bother with that and use Fast Reply almost exclusively. The formatting functions like bold and quote and italics are easy to do manually.

Another trick I use is grab the URL of the thread from the address box and then open a new tab and paste the url into it. Then I can just switch between tabs to refer to old posts as I compose a reply. Six of one, half a dozen of another.

aldiboronti - 01 February 2008 08:38 AM

The feature I miss most is the ability to see the posts in a thread while you’re replying to it. In Ezboard you could reply to particular posts, and under the reply box would be seen that post and all posts subsequent to it, extremely useful for checking details in posts as you were composing the reply.

There’s a small purple (in my browser) bar at the bottom of the editing screen.  The text in the purple bar is “thread review”. clicking on it gives you the thread from the note you are responding to back to the first note.

Whoa, I never noticed that—thanks!

Yes, thanks!

Cool!

The very thing! Well found that man!

nice thing is that “thread review” displays the replies in reverse order; more logical as you are probably replying to the most recent contributions