#6 ideas for configurable user interface
I would love to have configurable options when using the forum like the following:
- A "positive list" of names of authors, definable by any kind of user interaction, to allow the
user to display a view of the forum main file displaying messages by these authors only.
(Others might want a "negative list" as well - I don't.)
This would help me speed up the check for the most interesting entry points into threads.
- The order of entries within such a positive list should (optionally) be used as ordering criteria
for the message display. (Thus the list must really be a list and not a set.)
- The same of both previous requests applies to message topics.
- It would be great to be free to use both views combined *or* separately.
- An (optional) linear view to (only) the forum main file sorted by posting date (newest on top);
when selecting a message from here it should be displayed as usual, including links to its thread.
(See http://www.webwriting-magazin.de/forum.htm, link "Neue Beiträge", for an example.)
This would reduce the necessity for scrolling in the main file. Most users cannot read all
messages, but if they visit the forum often they have to check masses of messages again
and again for new and interesting postings, as lots of old and new links are displayed in the
"unused" color by the browser; this view again would help me to select threads I want to join
into (by filtering out those I already rejected).
When having selected a link from here the navigation should work as if I has come from the
normal main file view, offering the thread links within each message.
- Additionally allow configuring this view so that only messages that have been submitted during
some specified time are displayed. (Maybe the last hour as a constant value, maybe even let
the user specify this by a HTML form, maybe store the delta value to "now" in the user's
configuration data, ...)
This should save bandwidth for the users who want to reload the forum's main file very often
to check if something has changed there.
Having such a feature one might even think about automatically reloading this forum's main file
view (using META REFRESH) in some appropriate frequency (10 minutes?).
Greetings,
Michael
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Good feature, it will definitively be built in.