long threads & jump to first unread

It takes a while to load a very long talk thread and then you have to wait for the touchstones data to show before you can click on (jump to first unread). If you are following a thread you want to go the first unread message more than anything else and the sooner you can get there the better! So I have two suggestions:

1) on a groups or talk page, clicking on the " unread" field of a topic row should take you to to the first unread message.

2) break up long threads into "pages". The limit can be chosen so as to ensure that most (say 90% of) threads don't spill into another thread. This may also save some disk and network bandwidth.

I like the first suggestion.

The second suggestion has merit as well, but it sounds as if it should be implemented by a parameter setting on your personal profile. I seem to recall that Tim has come down against this in the past. Once you start adding extra parameterization in, where do you stop? Wikipedia has a myriad of adjustments that you can make for your viewing pleasure, but then there are a whole community of developers working away. I think that some of the work should be relegated to the background, so that you can select actions even while the touchstones are still loading. I've no idea about the programming language that is being used to render the pages, but it doesn't sound beyond the wit of man.

I'd really just like to be able to jump to unread from the topic listing, rather than once inside the topic. Of course, "mark all as read" would be bliss also - right now I end up opening all the unread topics manually in tabs just to mark them as read at once. :(

>I'd really just like to be able to jump to unread from the topic listing, rather than once inside the topic.

Seconded.

>Of course, "mark all as read" would be bliss also

Seconded squared. (Does that mean we jump straight to fourthed?)

I third the first part of 3, but I wouldn't really use a mark all as read.

I'd rather have some type of divider in long threads, to indicate what part I've _actually_ read.

(4>Yes. sortakinda.)

Ah, see, I tend to at least skim through every thread in certain groups, but when I head into the deep waters of All Topics (or when I subscribe to a new and busy group), I'd love to be able to look over a whole page of threads I know I'll never catch up on and be able to say "these are the new ones since the last time I looked in".

#2: A judicious design decision serves the purpose for the most part without complicating the user interface with one more parameter to adjust (and most users will scratch their head and leave it alone in any case).

One other reason for not showing all of a thread. If you look a new but very long thread, chances are you are not going to read all of it so why show all of it? This thread for example has over 240 messages and 480KBytes of data and it keeps growing!

#3: "mark all as read" sounds like what usenet readers do! What is next, killfiles to ignore thread/posters? Threaded view? Sorted by poster/time/subject/linecount? Note that in case of usenet all of the above are implemented by a reader program, not the server. Actually I'd like it if there was an NNTP interface to LT groups so that I can read them in thunderbird or some other newsreader. Sending touchstone data would make a nice extension to NNTP. Not holding my breath though.

There *is* a way to ignore threads.

>7 bvs:

Now, see, I'm not against improving the forum functionality, but then again, I find the simplicity of the current system quite refreshing. The big downside to suggestions like this is that they will distract from the big issue: sorting out the author and work systems. I'm kind of giving up hope on that front. It looks as if we're going to end up with a wonderful social networking site, and a clunky cataloguing interface.

#9: If big issues are not resolved it is *not* because of suggestions like this. LT has limited resources and this being a popular site a lot of suggestions get made and only a subset will ever get implemented. What gets implemented generally depends on cost vs benefit. An easy to implement feature may get implemented even if not very popular. A very hard to implement feature may never get implemented no matter how popular. With that in mind, all I can do as a user is to make suggestions in the hopes that enough other people find them userful (i.e. high known benefit) and stand a chance of implementation if the cost is low!

I'd rather have some type of divider in long threads, to indicate what part I've _actually_ read.

Yes, I really think it's essential that we be able to reset the unread markers from the message we've actually read up to. As is, it's pretty much impossible to read long threads. If I can't get through the whole thing in one go, I usually end up abandoning it permanently.

>11 _Zoe_:

Post 53

I know, and I responded to him in post 50, but was ignored. I think Tim is just crazy and wrong in that instance.

You may notice that the default behavior of topic links is now to go straight to the last unread message. We're going to try it this way and see how people like it.

I looked at making the group name be linkable on the topic line for each message, but frankly, it was too messy and made interaction slower because you had to think about where you were clicking on that line. It offered greater functionality at the expense of ease-of-use. Both Tim and I thought the ease-of-use won that battle (this time).

Brilliant. I love it.

>14 conceptDawg: It's great. I really didn't even notice it was happening until you mentioned it because it's the norm for many message boards. Thanks.

I actually don't like it, because I usually go through the Talk page and open a whole bunch of threads in new tabs, and then work my way through them. By jumping to the first unread, I don't see the thread title, and my memory isn't good enough to remember which threads I opened in which order.

The only way this could work well for me is if there were a "back to top" link for each message, so I could jump back to the top, read the thread title, and then jump back to the first unread. Even so, this would be one more step than currently.

But, if it's just me, I'll live with it.

>17 rebeccanyc:, there is a back to top link in the header for each message -- or, anyway, there is when the thread is longer than 2 messages, so:

Message 17 ... Today, 12:26pm (top)

Wow, it is so much better this way. I usually just hit the end button and then page up if I need to, but this is much faster.

Thanks, Love it!

*echoes 16*

For 17's complaint about no title, what about adding the title to the header of the 1st unread message when skipping?

I would also like something like that indicates the topic I'm on when at the bottom of the page. Not sure how best to do that.

#17 : Note: Clicking the "Home" key takes me to the top without reloading. (and "End" goes to the bottom)

Ditto-ing rebeccanyc's comments in #17 ... I also open up a long list of tabs and find it very confusing to not know which thread I'm reading (and it sort of defeats the purpose to have to scroll down to get to the "back to top" link just to see which group/topic you're in)!

As has been suggested, could this be coded to feed the Group/Topic info to the browser's Title Bar, so that instead of saying "Talk | LibraryThing - Mozilla Firefox" it would say "Talk | Group: Recommend Site Improvements | Topic: long threads & jump to first unread", or some similar?

 

I'd also love to see the browser title bar populated with the thread title.

Can you make the 'jump to unread' feature optional for the user? I'm not sure I like it.... Can we set preferences for these kinds of things?

I like the jump feature a lot.

Is it only some people who have the 'top' link in each message bar or are people not seeing it?

Titlebar would be even better. :D

Chris is doing the changes on this, but I thought I'd jump in with something.

I've wanted the message bar to be a different color if read for a long time now. Maybe gray is read? Anyone?

I don't really like the idea of changing the colour of the message bar. The bold unread text is clear enough.

If you're making changes to how unread works, I think it's much more important to let us reset the unread marker when we don't finish reading a long thread.

I would like to see the thread title in the browser title bar.

One thing we could do is hide everything youv'e already read, with a link to expand it. That way the thread would start at the top of the page, with the title and the book list.

30: Sounds interesting, what about keeping the current anchor, but cutting the text at the message right before the last one you read? Slightly better context that way.

Different color titlebar sounds fine to me, but so is leaving it as is. The bold {unread} works pretty well to distinguish.

I still want a way to reset unread for a certain point, with long threads... There are enough threads in the 50+ range, let alone 100+.

#30 - I don't like that idea. I want all messages to show up on the same screen by default. Just because I've read a thread, doesn't mean I've memorized it. 9/10 times I will need to glance up to see what the new post is referring to.

But, I like the Zoe's idea for an option to somehow mark a thread as partially read. For example, maybe a thread has 120 posts, and we're only able to read the 1st 40. The remaining 80 have been "loaded" (if that is the correct word), but we haven't read them. So, how can we mark that we stopped reading at post 40?

One idea is a check mark (I'm sure this is flawed, but I'll put here for a brain storm). When we load a page, all messages are checked. But, we have the option of unchecking some. So, in the example, we might uncheck the 1st unread message, message 41.

32: I would interpret checkboxes as for individual messages, and would prefer a
{mark unread (above | below)}

If going with a checkbox thing I would go with all being empty then doing a 'from here to the end' mark as unread.

I'd also prefer something like in #33, though I don't really see a need for the "above" choice.

>30 timspalding: Tim -- Please don't hide them! There are a couple of groups where I go back all the time to look at previous threads and I'm afraid they'd get lost in the shuffle if they were hidden. Maybe make it an option? User can hide threads if they want.

I think Tim meant the read messages would be hidden rather than the thread would be hidden...

Thank you for implementing this feature! It saves me two clicks since I read a thread, hit z (to page back to the talk page) and select something else to read!

One minor nit: when everything has been read, revisiting the page takes you to the top. Seems going to the end may be more useful if everything has been read (I revisit a page mainly to reread something recent).

Tim(30):
Hiding everything you've read works for me but note that sometimes messages refer to earlier message so you'd have to open up prev. messages a lot if like me you don't memorize what every message says. Setting the titlebar to topic subject seems like a smaller change.

Rather than hide what is read so far, I still like limiting how much is downloaded to something around what you are reading -- I'd even like maps.google like trick of filling in text as you scroll but I suspect requiring javascript is not a good idea).

I am agnostic about other suggestions on this thread.

#18, sabreuse, Oh, do I feel stupid! Especially because I actually thought there was such a link, but life has been so crazy lately I must have been somewhere in outer space! Thank you.

#23, BTRIPP, Just curious, why did you add a link to my profile in your post?

When I talk about hiding it would be with a link to show the hidden part. Does that change this thing?

It would be nice not to have to download a huge thread in order to see a few new posts at the bottom. Could you back up 5 to 10 posts and only hide the posts above that? That would keep most of the context while still saving the time to download posts that are less likely to be pertinent.

1) on a groups or talk page, clicking on the " unread" field of a topic row should take you to to the first unread message.

I just noticed this going on, and thought it was a bug. It is very annoying.

42: What specifically is annoying/what's the advantage of being at the top (thread title, thread context)? I noticed on the other thread that you said you wanted the option... *curious*

> 43

I think you misread my other post. I said there that I don't always want to go to the first unread. Now I'm forced to.

What is specifically annoying about it? For some reason, it seems unnatural (not sure why, after all, I don't go back to the beginning when I pick up a book).

More important, though, I dislike the odd, visual "jump" that happens. The topic in fact does open at the top for just a split-second, and then it jumps to first unread. There's something disturbing to my eye about that. The best way I can describe it is to say that it's a physically and visually unpleasant jolt.

I don't like it either. I open a bunch of talk windows and have no way of knowing what the thread is about.

re #29: "#23, BTRIPP, Just curious, why did you add a link to my profile in your post?"

Too many years on LiveJournal, no doubt ... I was just trying to replicate the name format from the post's header ... of course, on LJ there's a tag for that, here it made me manually code it ... another thing to chalk up to the OCD, I guess!

 

#40 I guess it might be OK for excessively long threads (> 100 ?). But, personally, I will end up clicking a "show all" link anyway, because that is how I prefer to view them.

44>I was just asking for a longer explanation in my 43, really. *shrugs*

wanting to start from the top because it's the top post, the title, because I want to, etc. You covered it fine.

>44 lilithcat:, unfortunately the "jolt" is a result of the browser loading a lengthy thread and then realising it needs to jump to the anchor specified in the URL (the anchor shows after the # character, in this case the post number).

I personally welcome this change - but understand some people don't like/want it. I've usually seen this feature implemented on other sites where clicking the topic title will take you to the start of the thread, but somewhere beside the topic title is another link (usually an image of an arrow or something) which will take you into the topic and jump to the first unread message.

I think if the above could be implemented here, and it would be incredibly simple to do - it would save having to set yet another preference - and would keep everyone happy. Those who want to jump to the first unread could click the arrow (or some other icon) and those that don't just click the topic title. :)

I'm somewhat ambivalent about it - I was used to the old way, and I've quickly got used to this way.

Please don't hide all the previous posts - cache at least 10 with a show all after that. Most long threads are fairly self referal and a few posts are required for reference to how the topic has evolved from the original title.

I love this change just as it is. It instantly made a huge difference for me.

Would it be possible to mark specific posts as "favorites" the way we can star entire threads? That would help me on long threads that have lots of book recommendations and interesting information. I wouldn't mind hiding "read" posts if there was a way to bookmark or tag or otherwise quickly reference the posts within a thread that were particularly valuable to me.

Like reading_fox, I am ambivilent about the change.

Mostly. Like some others have mentioned, I often open several threads at once (sometimes a dozen or more) and then read them one after another. With this new thing, I have to go back to the top to see what each new thread is about anyway.

A fix for this is something I would like anyway - the title of the thread in the title bar of the browser.

The more I encounter it, the less I like it. I like seeing the title at the top, and it annoys me to have to click the Back to top link and then click the Jump to first unread link.

It's very disconcerting for me to start in the middle of the posts, partly because, as noted above, I tend to open a bunch of threads in new tabs and work my way through them. It's as if I closed my eyes, pulled a book out of the pile of books I'm in the midst of reading, and opened the book at the page I'd bookmarked when I stopped reading. First I'd have to recognize which book it was and then get back into the swing of it.

Would it be so difficult to allow each user to select a start at top/start at first unread option? I'm not a computer type, so I have no idea how much processing power this would need.

I like it as is.

But for those who'd rather go to the top... like AndrewB (#49) said, a second link for going to the first unread message is pretty common. Even just making the "7 unread" text a link would work.

While I am getting used to the extra steps (clicking on a "top" link to see what the hell I'm reading, then clicking on the "jump to first unread" link to get back down to where the thing opened), it seems a pointless "feature".

Again, I suspect there is a clear dividing line here between those who hate this and those who are enthusiastic about it, and that line is determined by how we read the Talk section. I, like others who have chimed in here, open as many as a dozen tabs (as many that will fit across my browser without having to scroll to get to the one with "Topics From Your Groups" tab) and then pop through them in order. The current "jump to latest" format is AWFUL for those of us who read like this, as it is very hard to tell what group/topic we're looking at. Now, folks who don't use tabbed browsing (LUDDITES!) probably think this is great, but I suspect it provides less convenience to them than it does irritation to us!

 

>56 BTRIPP: I open threads in many, many new tabs and I love this new feature.

Now, folks who don't use tabbed browsing (LUDDITES!) probably think this is great,

I don't use tabbed browsing (at least, not at work, where it's not possible) and, as already stated, don't like it.

BTRIPP

I disagree about there being a clear line between those who hate it and those who love it. There are a fair number of us who don't care that much and just get used to each new change as it comes :)

I will just sit here patiently hoping for the thread titles to appear in the browser title bar, though, instead of the oh-so-useless "Talk | LibraryThing".

LOVE IT! If the community vetoes it, that's ok, too, but personally, I like it much better.

Ooh yes, thread titles in the title bar would be wonderful...

*echoes 57*

I think the main common point is thread titles in the title bar.

My original suggestion was to jump to first unread message when you click on the N unread / M field as that would have been less surprising (currently that field toggles the star on its left).

If the title bar reflects the thread subject would that take care of the majority of objections?

Tim(40): I had assumed if you hid read messages you'd put in a link to open them so no that does not change anything. I still say rather than do something clever just break them up into "pages" of 100 messages or something.

BTRIPP(56): I do use tabs. I use Opera & when I have to restart it, I get all 50+ tabbed pages opened in the same place, intact with their history! Moving the mouse over a tab shows me a miniature image of the page and a readable title so that is another why I'd like to see the subject as the title.

But LT is not the only thing I read and keeping just one talk page open saves me time :-) Speaking of which....

The title in the title bar would help, but not much for those of us who open a bunch of threads in tabs. By the time I have even four or five tabs up there, the room for text is limited. To be specific, when I have six tabs open (the Talk page and five threads), there is room for 14 letters, which would just allow part of most Group names to show, and none of the thread name. And by the time I have 8 or 10 open nothing would show. So in essence I would still have to do what I do now -- click on Top to go back to the top to see the title, and then click on Go to first unread.

64: What about showing the title/thread header before the header of the first unread post?

Group: Recommend Site Improvements ----- {Star / ignore icons }
Topic: long threads & jump to first unread ----- 63 / 64 read

Message 64: rebeccanyc ---------- unread Today, 3:37pm (top)

64 rebeccanyc
I use lots of tabs, and the title in the title bar would help me a lot. It's true that the titles wouldn't necessarily be easy to read in the tab's title area, but when you go to each tab, the title would be there at the top of the browser and most if not all of it would be visible there.

In opera, safari & firefox title of the currently open tab is shown in the title bar of the top level application window where there is plenty of space (unles you are running this on a cellphone!). I suspect IE is the same?

bvs/67: yes, the page title shows, but people want the thread title as part of the page title.

If the thread title is put into the page title when you select that tab the full title will show up in the 'blue' bar at the very top of the window, not just on the tab ( at least for Firefox and IE).

It took me a while, but now I see what #66-69 are saying about the top level bar -- I never look there, but I guess I could train my eyes to do so!

14> conceptDawg wrote: I looked at making the group name be linkable on the topic line for each message, but frankly, it was too messy and made interaction slower because you had to think about where you were clicking on that line. It offered greater functionality at the expense of ease-of-use. Both Tim and I thought the ease-of-use won that battle (this time).

What about putting links to the first unread message in the unread/messages column on the group and talk pages? That way, members could either open a thread at the top by clicking on the topic name in the Topics column or could jump to the first unread message by clicking on 42 unread (or whatever) in the unread/messages column. Obviously, you would only include links for topics that have not been fully read.

This, incidentally, is what I believe was originally suggested in #1 (it may also have been mentioned in other messages here or elsewhere...I don't recall).

I notice that, right now, if you click anywhere in the unread/messages column, it toggles the yellow star. That wouldn't be a show-stopper, would it? You could put the star in a column of its own--a very narrow column, so that screen real estate does not become an issue--and then the star would only toggle when you click on it directly. Moving the star into its own column could eventually give the added benefit of allowing starred topics to be sorted to the top by clicking on the header of the new column (perhaps the header label can be a star itself).

This would, I think, please everyone (is that even possible?). Plus, I don't think it would require too much effort on your part(s) -- if so, then please ignore everything I've written here.

I'm liking this less and less. I feel it adds something power users want at the expense of making things less coherent. The jumps bother me much more knowing that the X% of users who don't have broadband will really feel them.

It seems to me from a non-scientific survey, that more users like this than don't like this. But I also feel like this is a classic question that breaks differenty between power-users and non-power-users, and that power users are much much more likely to contribute to the discussion. (It amazes me how much "lurking" goes on here; for me, talking isn't fun unless I'm talking too.)

What if there was a much more explicit message at the top, not

"42 / 71 read (jump to first unread)"

but a whole line dedicated to it, eg.,

You have read 42 of the 71 message. Click to jump to the first unread message.

You'd still need to click it, but it would be right there in the line of sight, clearly marked, not off to the right next to some numbers.

_Any_ way to jump to the first unread in one click would be nice.

I think if you put the "jump" link behind "26 unread" in "26 unread / 32" it would be clear enough, even without calling it "jump to first unread".

> message at the top

at the top of what? if it's _in_ the thread it's no improvement to how it was before (2 clicks instead of one)

Yes, at the top of the thread. So it would be two clicks.

I've actually got it in the code to make the '2 unread/34' in the talk listing a link, a la:
Some Group: Some Topic 5 unread/75

It was commented out so that we could test this implementation and get feedback. We have that now. :)

I REALLY like being able to jump directly to the unread messages without an extra click. So I would be one of those that would be on the other side of this fence. But, I have no problem clicking the "5 unread" link to get that functionality. I think this solves everybody's issues. The stuff at the top of the page is perfectly understandable to me (with the only change I would suggest is that of reversing the logic and changing the '/' to 'of' so that it would read '70 of 75 read (jump to first unread).'

I also think we should have the topic title in the browser title bar. It's one of my real peeves about LT, that I can't tell what tab is on what page by looking at them. See, we too have pet peeves that don't get fixed immediately! :)

> clicking the "5 unread" link

elegant and logical for me

> '70 of 75 read'

or '70 unread of 75' ?

(aside: in Safari, when I click 'post a message' I get catapulted to the top of the page and have to scroll down again to the field where I can write. But I got used to that ;-) )

Please don't take the ability to do the one-click jump away! The past couple of days reading topics has been a heck of a lot easier and quicker for me thanks to it!

As I said a little bit above (and now it looks like it might happen) make the topic title go to the top of the topic, and have some other link (e.g. the number of unread messages) to allow people the option to automatically jump straight to the first unread. :)

That's fairly standard on most forums I've seen.

> 72 vs. 75

I agree with Chris on all points.

tim(72): I thought power users were the ones who open gadzillions of messages in tabbed windows for their speed reading pleasure:-)

Anyway, this sort of give and take is what happens in any project where features are in a flux. I think it is fantastic that LT is doing this! I hope you don't get tired of people's feedback. I am sure learning a lot. You can't please all the people all the time but IMHO LT is doing a pretty good job so far.

conceptDawg(75): I agree with you 100%!

Positively my last message in this thread.

#75, I think this solves everybody's issues.

Works for me!

> 75

Good idea! It's not an "extra" click, after all, just a matter of where you click.

Choice is a wonderful thing.

Okay, Christopher, let's do it—two different clicks.

Ok...it's done.
Feedback please. (ducks)

I like the new system. Thanks.

Hooray, and I like the new colours behind the header of read/unread messages. Thanks Christopher and Tim :)

EDIT: oh, I just noticed the name of the topic now shows in the browser title bar, even better!

echoing 85. Awesome!

Like it. works no problems.

Brilliant; thanks.

I love the thread title in the title bar; it's something I have been quietly wanting for a long time. Thank you!

The "jump to first unread" and the different colors for read and unread messages are great. I am not seeing name of topic in browser title bar (IE6).

Love the title bar and choice of two links; not a fan of the colors.

Very nice. I do like the different colors, too.

Echoing #88: Brilliant! Thanks.

Echoing all the above praise . . . belatedly, but enthusiastically.

Excellent

Direct link and title bar: very nice, thank you!

> not a fan of the colors

ah, I could never have put it so diplomatically ;-)

Feedback = :D

I'm not a big fan of the purple/pink either. What about a pale green?

#98 that comes up on my screen as the LT brown very similar to the header.

Green sounds lovely (and I do agree that having a visible distinction is good). But pastel blue and pink together looks like LT's going to be announcing a sponsorship deal with Babies-R-Us any minute now.

(99: I guessed that's what they were going for, but it's very seriously baby pink for me.)

Now this I can live with. Excellent, thank you!

I'm not a big fan of the purple/pink either.

Purple? Pink?

On my screen it's pale (but not pastel) blue and a sort of mix of salmon & taupe. No pink or purple in sight.

I am encouraged by the praise. Who replaced the people normally inhabiting this topic? :)

The colors are the same ones used in other parts of the Talk section. Unread posts (the light blue) are the same color that all posts were yesterday. The read posts color (light beige) is the same color that is the header of the main Talk topics pages, and found in other places on the site. If you are seeing pink and purple I may humbly suggest you have your monitor calibrated. heh.

I like what you have done!

Let me try to summarize to see if I understand all you have done.

Now you can click on the topic title, in the group list, and you are taken to the top of the topic. There, a link to jump to the first unread post can be found.

In the group list if you click on the linked 'X unread' text, for a topic, you are immediately taken to the last unread post for the topic.

Read topics have a beige colored heading and unread topics have a blue heading.

Have I missed anything?

I like the clicking one place to jump to unread unread and the heading at the top.

I really hate the light pink (I don't believe it's beige). It's fine in moderation, like the one bar on the Talk page, but I don't like seeing so much of it. It makes me not want to read over the posts I've already read if at all possible. And I don't think it's necessary at all; the bold unread is plenty clear.

Any thoughts about letting us reset the unread marker at the post we've read up to?

Any thoughts about letting us reset the unread marker at the post we've read up to?

Maybe some more AJAX magic. As the Google Reader does, a post is not marked as read until you actually scroll over it. You'd probably then need a "mark all read" link at the top.

> 105, 106

I'd love to have that capability (resetting the marker)! Let's face it: be away from the site for as little as a day, and some of these threads get far too long to read at one sitting. (Yes, we're a talkative bunch, why do you ask?) So being able to go back to the place where one left off reading would be tremendously helpful.

ConceptDawg - don't you hate it when you give us what we want and then we want more? Ingrates, that's us! ;-))

I tell you, it's a bit heady see all this interaction between the users and developers in the span of 6 days!

>104 tcgardner:

Yes - the thread title is displayed on the title bar (or whatever the correct name is).

Yay changes!

Unread marker please? ;)

(I'd rather have pink, but I see the brown.)

I'm seeing a nice salmon.

Okay, it's a beige-y, salmon-y lightish pink flesh tone THING. (Some slight lavender tone, while we are at it.)

I'd prefer a sage-y, lightish green leaf tone THING.

I want plaid. Lots of plaid.

We've gone plaid!

(Isn't that from Space Balls?)

Can I get any votes for paisley!

I'll second the sage-y, lightish green leaf tone THING.

Edited to add period

Puce! (116 would be fine too, or as is.)

I do agree that for some reason, the color that looks salmon up at the top looks much more pink in the middle of the page.

Admittedly, it's not a color I care for either way. But I don't care about the top bar so much. However, I too would prefer something less...pink in Talk. It hurts my eyes, particularly if I'm at all migraine-y already (which I am right now).

ConceptDawg: Great job! Thanks!

Probably the following belong in a different thread....

The color discussion reminds of the What Color Bikeshed entry in FreeBSD FAQ. This phenomenon was originally described in Parkinson's law, and other studies in administration where he doesn't talk about bikeshed colors but for some reason this more colorful phrase has stuck.

Getting colors, their balance and other design elements right in UI is not so easy. See, for instance, http://csszengarden.com where they show the same page in many different styles and see how some are very pleasing ,some busy, some simple, some easy to read and so on. It would be fun to see LT all spruced up!

>119 bvs: bvs

"Painting the Bikeshed" - thanks! This phenomenon has driven me crazy for years. I just knew there had to be a semi-official explanation for it.

So while we are painting that bikeshed, how about puce paisley?

a plaid of puce and paisley?

Now that you can jump to the first unread with one click it would be nice to have a link back to the group page at the bottom of the thread.

122: Also true!

119 bvs - re "painting the bikeshed"

Fascinating! Reminds me of what happens every time there is a new administrator for (whatever). They always seem to feel that they must change something - even (perhaps especially) things that should fall under the 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' heading - just to show that they're in control now. It happened rather rather spectacularly in a student-run fashion/art show I participated in last year - the new people felt they had to change everything, including all the things that made the previous year's show work so well, and ended up with a disaster. I'd be a little surprised if there was another show next year.

The pink (salmon, whatever) still hurts my eyes, though.

I see salmon. I seriously just don't see pink. And I was trying to figure out why, so I even adjusted my monitor settings any and every way I could, but I never came up with pink. Just salmon. (This is my round-about way of saying I like the salmon).

Easy to use; easy on the eye -- Thanks, Chris!

I hope you like the change. You asked for it. :)
You'll be more careful what you ask for in the future.

You'll be more careful what you ask for in the future.

Um ... so I'm hoping for a wishlist that doesn't have paisley ....

*laughs*

*laughs*

*laughs some more*

What the heck? :p

EDIT: Very clever, it's only in this thread - thank goodness, lol!

Er...

Am I the only one who actually rather likes it?

Heh.

Morphidae -

Not really ;)

blue -

Can you imagine the clamour if we paisley-ed all of Talk? Hee hee. Only thing needed is to bold nicknames so they show up better.

:) I like it. I hope someone does not mention a leopard or tiger print. Now, that would be too much!

Edit: Wait! I just did! Oh no!!!

Morphidae - sounds like a good April Fool's Day joke to me (pity it's so far off).

One word: moiré

Oh, this is delightful. ~smiles~

Hee!

Go paisley! ;)

#130, I won't say I was panicking, but I was relieved to reach this post and realize "it's only in this thread"!

Perfect!

This is actually an improvement over the pink.

Ick, I much prefer the light beige to this. It is giving me a headache trying to glance at the name, dates, etc., and seeing a muddled mess. Let's hope the infection doesn't spread to other threads. ;)

I love this. I was reading the thread and wondering why my monitor showed swirls when no-one mentioned them in the comments til 130 or so. A pink paisley elephant in the corner of the room... LOL

Just experimenting . . .

eeek! are you experimenting with acid?? : )

It looks like 1950's wallpaper. This is not a compliment.

same experience as #143 ryn_books.

... skins. all the hip young kids like having skins on their sites. the name creeps me out, but now with paisley message bars (which i too like better than baby-shower-pink/blue) and suggested tiger stripes i can see the advantage ...

#142> Let's hope the infection doesn't spread to other threads.

Uh oh, I bet we're all carriers by now... I wonder how fast it mutates?

Wow, paisley!

Groovy!

<rubs eyes>

Tim: seeing spots? ;)

Oh no! Now it's just a matter of time 'til we see a spotted leopard print.

I'm seeing spots, too. Paislies, really, but they do look spot-like. Happened in the last few minutes I think. (Or at least, I'm pretty certain it was still plain at 9!).

I do like having the different colors, though.

They look like spots because the paisley patterns are regularly spaced. Irregular paisleys don't have that regular repeat.

I'm assuming that the colour (in the other threads) didn't change, and it's because I'm using a different computer that it now looks a lot better. At least now I can understand why that colour was chosen. But the fact remains that on the computer I use every day, it's a horrible pink.

Oh dear, the patterns on the bar make it very difficult to read the text.

Strong NO vote here.

>157 teelgee:

It's a joke.

Hey, this is a powerful tool for providing editorial control over maverick threads:

If a discussion is too adolescent, then use some shallow back-to-school theme or cheesy childhood images.

If a discussion is too contentious, then use soothing pastels and water motifs.

For discussions attempting to establish that "Man > Woman", pink lace should do the trick (although a pleasant tampon motif might be equally effective).

For discussions that cast acrid aspersions on the LT staff (or, gasp, question their priorities), then set the background to midnight black and use a harsh plaid (with lots of bright yellows and greens), aternating with blinking neon pink, for the message headers--anything to prevent unorthodox fomentation among the malcontents.

Now, I wonder what they'd use to discourage stupid faux suggestions such as this one...

> Now, I wonder what they'd use to discourage stupid faux suggestions such as this one...

White on white works wonders.

>158 DaynaRT: Whew.

>160 antqueen:

A touch, a touch, I do confess.

>159 SilentInAWay:

I spend too much time on here already. I would be popping in all day long, to see what the color themes were doing.

Using the unread link doesn't work very well when it leads to a thread that has pictures posted in it. You end up several posts above where you normally would in an unillustrated thread.

I must say that this sounds like it is probably a browser bug since we are just jumping to a named anchor. But it's worth a look.

Actually it works just fine, the problem is pictures load much slower than the text, so we jump to the first unread and then pictures download and push the posts farther down, irritating but as far as I know not much to do about it.

Other sites deal with the uneven load times fairly well though. Obviously Talk runs on homebrewed code, but I thought I'd point it out anyways, just in case there was a quick fix.

I noticed this before, and it is actually something I expected before the code was put into effect - the same thing happens on other sites I go to that have similar functions.

Yep, it's a browser thing - I've not found a site yet which handles staying at the anchor while pictures load and cause the page to lengthen.