the 10 second update is nice
right afta i posted i hit return to article and it was already there! woohooo!

-jordan

I noticed that after you post a comment, if you wait long enough, you are automaticaly redirected back to the article page.

-TrumpetMan

That doesn't really benefit me; I just open a new window for each reply.

I like the <10 second update, though. Now we can reply more quickly to new comments. I wonder how this will affect flamewars. Hmmm... :-)

I think the <10 second delay thing is great, too.

I don't use a new window, I just post a comment, then either [backspace] twice, or hit back twice. I think it's faster than opening a new window.

Aye, but if you have Mozilla, or in my case, Firebird, all it takes is a simple clich of the middle mouse button. I cannot live without that center mouse button....

-W-

I use Mozilla too.

In IE, you can do shift+click to open a new window. I did that a lot until I started using Mozilla.

BTW, what is up with you "aye"s? Are you a pirate now or something?

Yes, he is. Remember our instant messanger converasion, W?

-TrumpetMan

I perfer Opera's mouse gestures. It's got lots of other advanced features I like too.

That's what I was thinking too-now people can talk in semi-real time.

Yeah, that RSS thing is pretty cool. If I had a webpage, I would use it to put ticalc stuff on it.

But it really freaked me out to see my posts already up in the survey. I accidently hit the "return to article" link. I never hit it because I want to continue where I left off. Anyway, I hit it, and saw my posts up. I was like woah.

-W-

Well, apun futher inspection, I did not hit the button, it took me back on it's own. Hey, Magnus, do you think there could be a way to return a person to the part of the page they were already on? That way we can see out new posts, and continue where we left off.

-W-

Well, if you hit back twice, that brings you back to the same spot, so... I forget the javascript for this, so it may not be right, but wouldn't you be able to do just do something like: history.go(-2); or something- to go back two pages?

Yes, but would that aslo refresh the page?

-W-

I don't know much about java but I know that there is a way to do it, I just don't know how.

I believe that when the site is updated (after you post a comment) you cannot return to the place you left off, because the site is different...

Well, it attempts to go to where you left off, but it's not exactly where it was before. It's higher up. (Or down, if some was deleted) This has happened to me a few times before.

Um, I don't think so. Since going back one doesn't, I assume going back two wouldn't. I guess we could test this to see for ourselves...

(copies next line to clipboard to be ready) ...
javascript:history.go(-2);

Hmm... I don't think that works.

But since each comment is given a unique ID, it would be possible to have the page after Posting return to that comment if you put the tag <a name="ID"> (ID being the ID number) in the heading of each comment. To return, you would simply follow the link <a href="ADDRESS #ID">. It would involve some work, but would take you back to the comment you were currently reading.

Oh right, that is not a bad idea, but then you won't know if there was an update above you. Ah well, who cares.

But the only way to check that would be to read the entire page again. lol

OK...here's a solution, but it may be time consuming to make...the background of posts is BLUE, so what if NEW articles were RED? then you could scroll quite rapidly and see immediately what posts are new...or, you could put in a date or something and have all posts posted after that date be red! that would probably be easier...

The easiest thing to do would include a script which, upon the load of each comment, it looks at the date and time. If that is less than 5 minutes ago, it turns the bgcolor of that comment's body red. It would create an index of all of these red comments, and scan them. Once they are more than 5 minutes old, it will turn the background color back to white. This way would be inefficient, but very easy. The most efficient way would be to have the server flag the messages as the page is being downloaded.

Sounds great for all of us obsessed with the message boards like me!!! :-)

That's not a bad idea... you could store your last visit time in a cookie, and all the new articles after that time could be red. Or... perhaps, you could just store maybe the ID of all of comments you've seen in a cookie, for the current article, and if they're new, they're red. Though that's still a lot of work...

That's also a very large cookie...

The other part about tracking when you last read a page - the problem with that idea is when the page is split into say 3 pieces (because there are many comments), you need to store a separate counter for each page, right? But then somebody adds something to page 1, causing a post to move from page 2 to page 3, and that's not an easy situation to handle.

...but that wouldn't work in lynx ;)