Navigation links directly in the display of single post

When the tree of a thread gets large, navigation to the next message in the tree view might become quite cumbersome.

Have a look at this thread on the ICE-Treff forum as an example.

To navigate to the replies to a message, one has to scroll up and down to find the appropriate branch of the tree, which then moves the message just read out of sight.

It would be helpful, if MLF could provide direkt links to the direct neighbor nodes in the tree, both the one upward as all the nodes downward, i.e. the replies.

How?

On top of the message, to the right of the link "back to forum index" the link (as in the "reply" window), "Back to the entry of UserXYZ",

and at the bottom an unordered list (UL) of links to direkt replies of that message, with the LI elements being ordered horizontally, and with CSS "float: left", so that they fold into the next line, if needed.

Hello

When the tree of a thread gets large, navigation to the next message in the tree view might become quite cumbersome.

Have a look at this thread on the ICE-Treff forum as an example.

*Pfft* 159 entries for the thread. thats nearly nothing! ;-)

I know a forum where a "hot" thread can have 400 to 600 postings. And there occurs an additional problem, when some branches itself gets so many answers, that you have to scroll to the right, even if you use your browser in full screen mode on a full-HD-resolution-monitor.

That's UX-complexity in it's best! :-)

To navigate to the replies to a message, one has to scroll up and down to find the appropriate branch of the tree, which then moves the message just read out of sight.

Ok, let's define "last" and "next".

In a branch, where one posting is an answer to another posting, "last" and "next" is well defined. When I posted an answer, the "last" posting is the one I answered and the "next" is the answer to mine.

But, look at this one. It is an answer to another posting but itself has no answer/no child/no next. On the other hand it has a sibling posting. This one seems to be the substituted "next" one.

I linked to the single posting view with the thread tree underneath the posting. The nested view of the postings follows the composition of this thread tree. On the other hand in this view one posting follows to the other without need of links.

Same in a hypothetical board view. Is there a possibility to show the thread in a board styled view like in version 1.x? Board view would have a date-of-posting-sorting that could differ from the composition of the threaded and nested views.

It would be helpful, if MLF could provide direkt links to the direct neighbor nodes in the tree, both the one upward as all the nodes downward, i.e. the replies.

All in all (after discussion about the details) a good idea.

Tschö, Auge

--
Trenne niemals Müll, denn er hat nur eine Silbe!

To navigate to the replies to a message, one has to scroll up and down to find the appropriate branch of the tree, which then moves the message just read out of sight.

Ok, let's define "last" and "next".

In a branch, where one posting is an answer to another posting, "last" and "next" is well defined. When I posted an answer, the "last" posting is the one I answered and the "next" is the answer to mine.

OK, there has to be diffentiated between reply (child) and parallel message (sibling). I din't think of siblings, only mother and descendants. But when displaying the links, there should be a clear distinctions between descendants (replies) and siblings (other replies to same "mother").

I linked to the single posting view with the thread tree underneath the posting. The nested view of the postings follows the composition of this thread tree.

Does MLF provide such a "nested view", where the text of a posting is shown right in the tree where it is positioned? At ice-treff.de I can't see a way to select such a view. But, thinking about it, that would be the most logical.

Because

On the other hand in this view one posting follows to the other without need of links.

Same in a hypothetical board view. Is there a possibility to show the thread in a board styled view like in version 1.x? Board view would have a date-of-posting-sorting that could differ from the composition of the threaded and nested views.

That would radically differ. There are other forums, where this is the standard way of doing (like this other forum which I frequent: http://www.bahninfo-forum.de/list.php?9 ), where threads get really uncomprehensible when reply to relatively old messages are being posted.

All in all (after discussion about the details) a good idea.

I'm looking forward to see it

Hello

Does MLF provide such a "nested view", where the text of a posting is shown right in the tree where it is positioned? At ice-treff.de I can't see a way to select such a view. But, thinking about it, that would be the most logical.

on the right side, the link "in Thread öffnen" is the one to use.

Tschö, Auge

--
Trenne niemals Müll, denn er hat nur eine Silbe!

Does MLF provide such a "nested view", where the text of a posting is shown right in the tree where it is positioned? At ice-treff.de I can't see a way to select such a view. But, thinking about it, that would be the most logical.

on the right side, the link "in Thread öffnen" is the one to use.

Das ist aber wieder zuviel des Guten.

That is more than expected - it shows all messages in the thread in a nested view. That is another way of loosing sight of the wood by the trees.

I assumed to see only a single message placed just where it is located in the tree.

Hallo

Does MLF provide such a "nested view" ...?

on the right side, the link "in Thread öffnen" is the one to use.

Das ist aber wieder zuviel des Guten.

That is more than expected - it shows all messages in the thread in a nested view.

Works as designed and intended.

That is another way of loosing sight of the wood by the trees.

It loads a whole bunch of data at a single time, dependant to the thread's size. That's handicap and benefit at once.

I assumed to see only a single message placed just where it is located in the tree.

I prefer it also to have a single posting at a time. Other people prefering the single page view for the whole thread.

Tschö, Auge

PS: Warum setzt du immer zwei Leerzeichen vor jede Zeile?

--
Trenne niemals Müll, denn er hat nur eine Silbe!

PS: Warum setzt du immer zwei Leerzeichen vor jede Zeile?

Nicht vor jede Zeile, sondern vor die 1. Zeile von jedem Absatz. Und ein wenig Leerraum zwischen den Absätzen machen den Text leichter lesbar.

Nicht vor jede Zeile, sondern vor die 1. Zeile von jedem Absatz. Und ein wenig Leerraum zwischen den Absätzen machen den Text leichter lesbar.

Dir fällt aber schon auf, dass deine Eingaben im HTML nicht dargestellt werden? Wenn du das haben willst, gibt es zwei Möglichkeiten:

Im stylesheet "text-indent:X;" verwenden, wobei X eine numerische Angabe + Einheit ist (etwa in em oder px)
In deinen Posts am Anfang jedes Absatzes den numerischen Code für einen non-break space eingeben. In Windoofs [Alt][0160], Linux & Äpfel keine Ahnung. Unten ein Beispiel.

Diese Zeile ist eingerückt (im Quellcode    am Anfang).
Diese nicht.

--
Cheers,
Alfie (Helmut Schütz)
BEBA-Forum (v1.8β)

Nicht vor jede Zeile, sondern vor die 1. Zeile von jedem Absatz. Und ein wenig Leerraum zwischen den Absätzen machen den Text leichter lesbar.

Dir fällt aber schon auf, dass deine Eingaben im HTML nicht dargestellt werden?

Hm, stimmt, zumindest in diesem Forum wird das als "White Space" verdampft. S'ist halt eine alte Gewohnheit, gut lesbar zu schreiben, noch aus der Schreibmaschinenzeit.

Hallo

Nicht vor jede Zeile, sondern vor die 1. Zeile von jedem Absatz. Und ein wenig Leerraum zwischen den Absätzen machen den Text leichter lesbar.

Dir fällt aber schon auf, dass deine Eingaben im HTML nicht dargestellt werden?

Hm, stimmt, zumindest in diesem Forum wird das als "White Space" verdampft.

Wo HTML im Einsatz ist, werden Whitespaces (Leerzeichen, Tabulatoren) grundsätzlich zu einem Leerzeichen zusammengefasst. Nicht nur hier, sondern überall. Ausnahme ist die bewusste Verwendung von geschützten Leerzeichen, wie sie Alfie vorschlug. Das ist systemimmanent.

Tschö, Auge

--
Trenne niemals Müll, denn er hat nur eine Silbe!

When the tree of a thread gets large,

Another monster-thread sprung up on ICE-Treff with currently 350 messages.

This brings me to a second suggestion in relationship to this problem:

Enable folding and unfolding of sub-trees, not only the whole thread on the main level. This would already help to keep some measure of oversight.

Hallo

Another monster-thread sprung up on ICE-Treff with currently 350 messages.

This brings me to a second suggestion in relationship to this problem:

Enable folding and unfolding of sub-trees, not only the whole thread on the main level. This would already help to keep some measure of oversight.

That's not a good idea. A JavaScript has to monitoring every thread tree fork and that's IMHO much to much. A simpler and half implemented solution is to mark visited postings permanent and clear in the thread tree. Half implemented, because the forum script breaks the visited-marking for links of the browsers.

Tschö, Auge

--
Trenne niemals Müll, denn er hat nur eine Silbe!

Hi!

To navigate to the replies to a message, one has to scroll up and down to find the appropriate branch of the tree, which then moves the message just read out of sight.

I would like to mention an even more complex but in my opinion better solution for the threaded view.
Divide the viewport into two vertical arranged areas:

Put the navigation at the top.
Use a div at the bottom for the post content which will be loaded by AJAX calls according to navigation events.

This would result in a real usenet client experience. ;-) But I could imagine that this would be hard to implement.

Greetings,
Manuel

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Navigation links directly in the display of single post (General)