Endless Threads (forum feature)

[67500fb37c005Kolya]

I've started to write a new forum feature today. The idea is to do away with pages in threads and have new content load automatically when you get close to the bottom of the page. I'm sure you know this feature from various blogs and such.

This is still work in progress, in a few weeks it may be finished. But it's there and it basically works and since I'm a firm believer in "Release early, release often" you can try it now (if you're a registered member). At the bottom of your Look and Layout preferences is a checkbox for it. It is currently disabled by default.
If you want to try it, check the box, save and visit any thread that has several pages. Scroll down. Notice the slight lag when new content is loaded in the background. Hopefully I can make this better by optimising the code.

°SMA

[67500fb37c1bcicemann]

Enabled

[67500fb37c62dDrone-Dragon]

I've started to write a new forum feature today. The idea is to do away with pages in threads and have new content load automatically when you get close to the bottom of the page. I'm sure you know this feature from various blogs and such.

This is still work in progress, in a few weeks it may be finished. But it's there and it basically works and since I'm a firm believer in "Release early, release often" you can try it now (if you're a registered member). At the bottom of your Look and Layout preferences is a checkbox for it. It is currently disabled by default.
If you want to try it, check the box, save and visit any thread that has several pages. Scroll down. Notice the slight lag when new content is loaded in the background. Hopefully I can make this better by optimising the code.

°SMA

I never really used that feature on Deviantart because I'm on dial-up, but putting that aside I never really liked that way of loading pages because if something goes wrong you have to scroll alllllll the waaaaay back down to where you left off, even on broadband. Whereas pages are kind of like waypoints I suppose. I'm sure there are plenty of people that like this way of doing it by scrolling down, so I'm glad you're doing it for their sake. I'd also like to thank you very much for making it optional so that those like me can still use nav point alpha, nav point beta, etc.

[67500fb37c76dKolya]

It will definitely stay an optional thing.

// I largely cleaned up the code tonight, some more fine tuning to do.
// I'm also considering to do the same for thread index pages once finished.

[67500fb37c888icemann]

On the REALLY big threads that would be a nightmare. Imagine we had a thread like the "what are you playing" thread over on TTLG. Be a page so long its not funny.

[67500fb37c9b4Kolya]

Yeah, but even with endless threads you still have the page navigation. You can also see the page that you're currently reading in the thread now (interspersed topic bars begin with page 2).
So you can jump into any page or to another page whenever you like. This results in a regular page load and then automatic thread elongation starts again from there.

[67500fb37cb6fKolya]

I've rewritten the script and now background loading of the next page is practically unnoticeable. I've also reworked the page navigation to coherently display the page you're currently viewing and allow you to jump more easily.

I think this is a worthwhile feature and I wouldn't know how to make it any better at the moment. Therefore I'm turning endless threads into the default setting for members. That means you will have to turn it off in your Look and Layout preferences if you don't like it. 

I'd like to hear any feedback, problems or positive.

[67500fb37cc61Kolya]

voodoo notified me of a problem with ninja editing dynamically loaded posts. This has now been fixed.

[67500fb37cdf2Kolya]

Quotes and acknowledgments didn't work very well with endless threads and have also been fixed in the meantime.
 
And I wrote a new feature in the last days, which is based on endless threads:
With the little arrows under the member's avatar you can scroll to the previous and next post of that member in that thread. If you click "∨" then the function will scroll through the thread and load new pages if necessary and look for another post of that member. If no new post is found it will return to the last post.
If you click "∧" the function will scroll back to the last post of that member, but it will not load previous pages if you jumped into the thread on a later page. The reason is simply that endless threads doesn't work backwards. Maybe I'll do that later.

//Some fine tuning on the scrolling function