Unread Posts

[gkawa]

It's not exactly a new request. It's a request for improvement on an existing feature.

The button "Unread Posts" goes to a page called "Recent Unread Topics." The content is a list of topics that have been updated since the last visit. That's what the title of the list says but it doesn't match the button on the menu. The links go to the top of each topic and what users want is a link to the post itself. Mostly in topics that are long.

I made a list of Unread Posts, in the previous version, as a block in the portal. Now, with the upgrade to 2.1, I've decided to drop the portal completely because a lot of functions that we had there are already in 2.1 (mostly alerts).

If it helps, I can post the code I used. It has a couple of minor details that are specific to our forum but the most useful part (I think) is the query to get the oldest unread post of every topic.

[Kindred]

the NEW link goes to the oldest unread post within the topic.
(in other words, the start of the unread section)

At least it does that on a standard SMF installation....

[shawnb61]

Somewhat similar to the Recent Posts link on the home page (though they won't fall off once you have read them). 

I was surprised that one of the few requests we had after we upgraded to 2.1 was to make it much easier to find/read all Recent Posts...  Folks wanted the Recent Posts link next to the Unread Posts & Updated Topics links at the top of the page...  I think it's a volume thing - we get 10-20 posts a day, usually across 4-5 topics, and many folks are interested in multiple topics.  It's the quickest, easiest way to READ all the updates without navigating around. 

[m4z]

the NEW link goes to the oldest unread post within the topic.
(in other words, the start of the unread section)

I still find this confusing and often click the link instead of the tinyish image by accident. I can't, for the life of me, imagine why a user would want to read a thread from the beginning (in this context).

[m4z]

The button "Unread Posts" goes to a page called "Recent Unread Topics." The content is a list of topics that have been updated since the last visit. That's what the title of the list says but it doesn't match the button on the menu.

I want to add that the action also doesn't match:
* "Unread Posts" (link) = "Recent Unread Topics" (page) is ?action=unread (which is OK-ish but I would prefer all three to be as identical as possible)
* "Updated topics" (link) = "Updated topics" (page) is ?action=unreadreplies

I would suggest to change "Recent Unread Topics" to "Topics with unread posts" (and maybe change the action to "unreadposts", see below).
[Edit]: Although I'm not sure how "Updated topics" works technically and if "Topics with unread posts" would be technically true.


I don't know the history around "unreadreplies" but I assume the text strings started out identical and were changed later (so there are reasons not to change the text strings to "Unread replies"), so maybe the action could be renamed to "updated" or "updatedtopics"? (And maybe keep the legacy actions around until 3.0?)

[Diego Andrés]

I'd say 'unreadreplies' displays exactly what it says, because if you are following topics, you'd have unread replies. Updated topics as the title/text is what I find strange for that area.

However, 'unread' action reads 'unread posts', which seems off too, but fits 'Updated topics'...

[m4z]

I'd say 'unreadreplies' displays exactly what it says, because if you are following topics, you'd have unread replies. Updated topics as the title/text is what I find strange for that area.

So you're saying change "Updated topics" to "Unread replies"? I'd be fine with that too, I just assumed there were (historical?) reasons for it to not be that.