Automatic loading of new posts/topics

[Petter B]

When watching the topics of a board, recent, unread... in Tapatalk 2, new topics loads automaticly when you have scrolled to the bottom of the page. I have also seen this feature in webshops. Would it be possible to implement it in the forum? It would be nice and maybe also save some traffic when not reloading a new page by pressing next page, just fetching new topics.

[All Colours Sam]

There is a mod floating around here, do a search for "infinite scroll". Def mod material.

[Kindred]

yes... that would potentially KILL the server on any active forum.

[emanuele]

How exactly?

[Kindred]

like any "autoload" option....
if 25 people are doing it... no worries, if 250 people are doing it, that's a load...  if 600 people are doing it, that is a heavy load.


In order to autoload, it would either need to provide ALL possible messages at the time of the initial page load or with would beed to query the database each time the user browsed to the end of the page....

[All Colours Sam]

False.

You ain't messing with the queries, all you are doing is changing the presentation, the way SMf fetches the messages remains intact.

[Kindred]

hmmm....   really?

I think we are perceiving this request in two different ways.
However, if your way works without extra load, then it's all good.

(Still mod material, though, I agree with that)

[Arantor]

Well, ultimately what we're talking about is triggering the next page of results being queried when the user gets to the bottom of the page without them having to hit a button. Potentially a marginal extra load but not a significant one in most cases.

Emanuele did a mod for this for topics already

[All Colours Sam]

There is no different ways.

SMF already loads the next batch of messages when someone clicks on any of the pagination links, all infinite scroll does is saving the user from clicking that link. All you need to do is strip all other data and only retrieve messages.

[Kindred]

suki, huh

of coruse there are differnet ways to PERCEIVE requests.

as evidenced by the fatc that I, obviously perceived something very different in the request than you did, hence my statement and your correction.

[All Colours Sam]

.___.

Whos talking about perceptions?

There is no extra server load, period.

[Arantor]

Actually, that's not strictly true. If you're autoloading, you're loading things earlier than you would otherwise, sometimes of which it may not be desired, meaning you might accidentally make some more requests - but the amount of requests extra is likely to be barely measurable.

[All Colours Sam]

Actually, that's not strictly true. If you're autoloading, you're loading things earlier than you would otherwise, sometimes of which it may not be desired, meaning you might accidentally make some more requests - but the amount of requests extra is likely to be barely measurable.

Yes, autoloading can speed things up, however, under the context of "autoloading will kill your server" you can safely assume thats not true.

[Arantor]

Yup.

I'd also note that there are other side effects attached, like having to fix the URL displayed to users, amongst other things.

[Petter B]

There is a mod floating around here, do a search for "infinite scroll". Def mod material.

Thanks, but the only thing I found was a link to http://www.infinite-scroll.com ? Is that what you meant?

[emanuele]

http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=478326.0