Are you calling THIS threaded view ?! [Archive]

Burns

Mon 5th Aug '02, 5:15pm

Originally posted by wluke
Actually the threaded view mode is only half finished because the developers didn't know what the customers actually wanted. You can be disappointed or you can provide examples and possible solutions.
OK, sorry for being a little agressive,
i just though it was more then obvious what the true threaded view is,
but may be i was wrong ;)
Here are examples:

http://www.voy.com/1/
http://www.f25.parsimony.net/forum63153/
http://mkit.net/forum/forum.php3?config_id=1

I think enough of examples, and none of them is commertial script,
so i'm not making advertisment for concurrent product
( actually you you can not even get the 1) and 3) scripts,
number 2 is rather basic PERL(grrr) script )

Well... may be i'm wrong, but i think, the majority of these,
who really want to use threaded view,
would preffer the true threaded...
May be with expand/collapse in forum view ( which i dont like ),
but at least with any FORUM threded view

Burns

floleb7

Mon 5th Aug '02, 5:41pm

does the threaded view be disallow from admincp ?

bigmattyh

Mon 5th Aug '02, 5:55pm

I'm actually really liking the threaded view. The JavaScript is such a great idea, and so well done! It's really nice all around.

I would like to request one feature, though --

Can you come up with some way to highlight WHICH post is being displayed in the thread tree? When so many posts have the same title, it's easy to get lost. It would be uber-easy to do this using CSS -- just change the color of the post title to some sort of highlighted color, or even bold text.

Floris

Mon 5th Aug '02, 6:16pm

I am glad the frontpage didn't go threaded (yet) it looks good as it does, and I like the threaded threads view. One of the above sites has those cool dots in front of the threads to link them.. looks pretty good and gives a much easier overview what belongs to what. Maybe a nice idea!

Martz

Mon 5th Aug '02, 6:19pm

If I may explain myself.. ;)

Current vB thread forum: is great. But it is flat.

People talk about 1 thing, and 1 aspect of a subject. It is easy to go off topic, and when someone does you get a lot of stuff to read through your not interested in.

Threaded view: is good because it has more than 1 dimension. Peoples replies turn into a sub thread within the initial thread. This allows leafs of conversations to naturally flow, as people reply to a specific post, not an entire thread.

However, thread viewing is, for me anyway, time consuming and involves lots of clicking or going back in the browser. Conversation doesn't flow, so the impact of a threaded view is reduced. Nobody has been able to achive a unique and time saving way to allow threaded viewing of forums (or a single thread, with sub threads living in it) in an effcient manner before. I was impressed at vB 3.0s attempt to make this easier with the page not being displayed. However the flow of the conversation is lost as you only see 1 post at a time. I'm not entirely sure on how vB could or should solve this navigation problem. I still find its lots of clicks to read a single thread, however producing a way to look at a thread in many dimensions would certainly help.

Time for vB to break some ground and put on their thinking hats huh? :D

John

Mon 5th Aug '02, 6:29pm

Originally posted by Burns
Here are examples:

http://www.voy.com/1/
http://www.f25.parsimony.net/forum63153/
http://mkit.net/forum/forum.php3?config_id=1

Just a bit of a thought in relation to that one...

Effectively, vB just operates 'one level down' from that style of system. You could make a forum and set up the permissions so that users cannot create new threads. Then post new threads for each 'forum' that you want which will contain threaded views as you have described. That way, people can reply in that thread just as if it were a forum. A little template work could make the separation a lot less obvious too.

I hope I've managed to explain myself well there...

Burns

Mon 5th Aug '02, 6:52pm

Originally posted by John

Just a bit of a thought in relation to that one...

Effectively, vB just operates 'one level down' from that style of system. You could make a forum and set up the permissions so that users cannot create new threads. Then post new threads for each 'forum' that you want which will contain threaded views as you have described. That way, people can reply in that thread just as if it were a forum. A little template work could make the separation a lot less obvious too.

I hope I've managed to explain myself well there...
Hmmm...
I dont think it is a good solution...

First - i will not force ppl. even *formally* to respond a pre-definded;
it is not looks good to me...

Second - having always some post on header, even an empty one - does not looks good for me

Third - thread management, delete threads, move threads and so on...
On moderatation i will not be able to differ between new threads and new answers to existing threads

Fourth - guess no one tested so far a such a large threads...

Fifth - the "so called" new forum view is not looking good

Sixth - go home ( forum home ) will not work by default

Seventh - will not the so called forum view break or "drift",
will it break always correctly as in forum view,
no matter how long is the thread ?

No, sorry i dont like this idea at all.

Burns

The Prohacker

Mon 5th Aug '02, 7:02pm

Originally posted by Martz
Nobody has been able to achive a unique and time saving way to allow threaded viewing of forums (or a single thread, with sub threads living in it) in an effcient manner before. I was impressed at vB 3.0s attempt to make this easier with the page not being displayed. However the flow of the conversation is lost as you only see 1 post at a time. I'm not entirely sure on how vB could or should solve this navigation problem. I still find its lots of clicks to read a single thread, however producing a way to look at a thread in many dimensions would certainly help.

Hmmm..

It would add alot of code, but in threaded view, if there were no sub branches, just a line of posts, couldn't it be possible to show all those posts in the order they were made, almost like linear, just untill a split?

Example: There are 6 replies, all to the last post, so there is no branching there, then two people reply to the last post, branching it, you could show the 6 posts in a line, and offer the tree to see the other branches..

Dunno, its prolly hard for you to understand my logic....

samtha25

Mon 5th Aug '02, 9:21pm

Burns, I don't understand. If you want a fully threaded forum like the ones in your examples, why don't you use such a script. That approach is entirely different than the one VB uses.

I think UBB.threads handles the problem of providing a togglable threaded and flat view pretty well. Here's a site (http://www.graphicschat.com/ubbthreads.php?) where it can be seen in action without registering. The user can expand/collapse the threads list or toggle between flat/thread view of a thread. Defaults can be set in preferences.

tubedogg

Mon 5th Aug '02, 9:23pm

What I personally would like to see is something along the lines of this:

When you view threaded view, it shows X number of posts on one page, X being either the maximum number of posts shown per page (definable by admin) or the max number of posts shown per page (definable by user), and it displays them like this:
Post 1
  Post 2: Reply to Post 1
    Post 3: Repy to Post 2
  Post 4: Reply to Post 1
    Post 5: Reply to Post 4
      Post 6: Reply to Post 5

etc. all on one page. If there are more than X number of posts then you have to do some clicking.

Burns

Mon 5th Aug '02, 10:07pm

Originally posted by samtha25
Burns, I don't understand. If you want a fully threaded forum like the ones in your examples, why don't you use such a script. That approach is entirely different than the one VB uses.

I think UBB.threads handles the problem of providing a togglable threaded and flat view pretty well. Here's a site (http://www.graphicschat.com/ubbthreads.php?) where it can be seen in action without registering. The user can expand/collapse the threads list or toggle between flat/thread view of a thread. Defaults can be set in preferences.
Well... samtha...
i viewed and re-viewed this Infopop product many times, believe me...
( long time ago already )
I wrote even a whole post for the ubbthread-hacks board today, just did not posted it at the end...

There are few things about ubb(threads) that upset me

1. Infopop has quite bad reviews;
and it looks like the UBB image become worse and worse;
i'm not sure how good is the furure of the Infopop products.
Often the bad publicity is the begin of the end.

2. The Pricing: not only you pay once $229,
but you pay then every year $125
For the perfect product - may be OK, but ...

3. License
I tried and tried and tried to find anywhere on thier pricing/info site
that after paying the damn $229 i can use it for life.
May be i'm blind, but i can not.
( i believe it is so, but ppl. who even can not write
such an important thing where it belongs to be written, like it is done at vB ... )
The license itself consists to 30% of shouting
( they could use some anti-shouting filter for themself LOL ),
what turns me off as well
( and its language too )

4. They don't have the damn moderation per usergroup
( what is even more important for me then threaded view )
i would have to beg there again,
but doubt they have such a nice guy like FireFly,
who would make a hack for it
I could try, but i'm damn so tired...
At least as i asked something in thier forum,
the answer was not very friendly...
( ok, i'm not a license owner, but anyway... )

5. Well... i invested a lot time in testing of vB,
even reported one bug myself here(approved),
and re-reported one that was found by others first,
but was still in the "unapproved" forum
I changed few files myself for my board ( mostly moderation),
modified all the icons, colors,
so besides of non-threaded view i'm very happy with vB
I lost so much time in hope for vB3 "threaded" ( what a joke ),
i dont know...

Again, i brought vB ( owned license ) ONLY
threaded view feature was confirmed for Q2 in spring
( i just could not thing of such "threaded" form )

oh well...

Burns

samtha25

Mon 5th Aug '02, 10:33pm

Burns, I wasn't suggesting you use UBB.Threads. I was suggesting to the developers that they take a look at how it handles providing both a flat and threaded view for some ideas.

DCScripts does it somewhat differently. Check their support forums (http://www.dcscripts.com/cgi-bin/dcforum/dcboard.cgi?az=list&forum=dcfQ&conf=confDCF). Click on the small plus sign to the left of "Discussion" to switch to threaded view. In flat mode, long threads still display in threaded mode, but with an option to "View All" which is hybrid view.

Burns

Mon 5th Aug '02, 10:49pm

Originally posted by samtha25
Burns, I wasn't suggesting you use UBB.Threads. I was suggesting to the developers that they take a look at how it handles providing both a flat and threaded view for some ideas.

DCScripts does it somewhat differently. Check their support forums (http://www.dcscripts.com/cgi-bin/dcforum/dcboard.cgi?az=list&forum=dcfQ&conf=confDCF). Click on the small plus sign to the left of "Discussion" to switch to threaded view. In flat mode, long threads still display in threaded mode, but with an option to "View All" which is hybrid view.
Heh... lets ask Dev's how they understood it,
i think they thought too you rather talk to me then to them.

But to answer your question about "any" of these scripts -
i'm looking for such script since November,
i could not find one.
Usually even the more i like the form of the forum,
the less i like the rest
( poor support, poor security, small comminity, too few administration functions,
not exciting administration at all
and so on and so on ... :( )

bigmattyh

Tue 6th Aug '02, 12:40am

Keep in mind:

John said that they were purposefully leaving some aspects of the threaded view unfinished, so that they could receive feedback from us on how we'd like to see it in action. So nothing's finished yet!

JamesUS

Tue 6th Aug '02, 3:59am

When we developed the threaded view (and many other features in vB 3) we had to do it without customer input. We developed what we thought was what you wanted - but in this case clearly we weren't right and you wanted something slightly different.

The whole point of this period when beta.vbulletin.com is open but no-one can download it is to refine existing features to suit our customers. We need feedback on the features so that we can change them to make it better. There are lots of features that we're not sure if they work the way everyone wants them to so are relying on this beta period to work out.

Please bear with us and hopefully we can get threaded view changed a little bit to include forum threaded view as well.

Burns

Tue 6th Aug '02, 6:40am

Originally posted by JamesUS
When we developed the threaded view (and many other features in vB 3) we had to do it without customer input. We developed what we thought was what you wanted - but in this case clearly we weren't right and you wanted something slightly different.

The whole point of this period when beta.vbulletin.com is open but no-one can download it is to refine existing features to suit our customers. We need feedback on the features so that we can change them to make it better. There are lots of features that we're not sure if they work the way everyone wants them to so are relying on this beta period to work out.

Please bear with us and hopefully we can get threaded view changed a little bit to include forum threaded view as well.
Thank you JamesUS !
Actually the advice of samtha25 was very good:
i doubt, there the majority of threaded-fans like the current view more,
but anyway there seems to be many ppl. as well,
who want exactly what you implemented.

So the best solution would be to go exactly the same way as ubbthreads,
where the user have actually 4(!) view options,
becasue he can turn forum threaded view on and off,
and independently thread threaded view on and off !

Also look at the Alpha board:
not just me, but so many "flat hardliners" want
to be able to disable the other view once and forever,
and they/wir are you customers,
not these who use your customers forums,
so give us the admin option to disable the other view
in addition to 4er schema, and your customers will be happy, believe me !
( and will even do the best advertisment for vB for free :D )

Burns

ethank

Tue 6th Aug '02, 12:40pm

There are various ways threaded view can be improved. The problem with it in my view is it only shows one message, so you loose context. What it should show is all messages underneath the one you clicked in the hierarchy, and somehow reflect that hierarchy back.

sc3000.com (which is home brewed) and Webboard did this.

tubedogg

Tue 6th Aug '02, 8:29pm

You mean kind of like this?

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?postid=330874#post330874

:p

ethank

Tue 6th Aug '02, 8:39pm

Originally posted by tubedogg
You mean kind of like this?

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?postid=330874#post330874

:p

Kind of, but don't show the entire thread, only everything under the level of hierarchy you click on.

Threaded views inherently present issues of usability, but I think (and a good number of those that use my site) that they do increase the usefulness of a site.

samtha25

Tue 6th Aug '02, 9:25pm

Originally posted by ethank
[B]There are various ways threaded view can be improved. The problem with it in my view is it only shows one message, so you loose context. What it should show is all messages underneath the one you clicked in the hierarchy, and somehow reflect that hierarchy back
In this case if you click on the first message in a thread and all messages in the thread are in reply to the first message, you're basically getting a flat view. It seems you basically want a way to enter a thread at point that will show only messages in a branch or all messages from that point forward in a flat view. Yet the thread index also has to be shown, which will make for a pretty cluttered page. Giving users an easy toggle should help.

Developers and everyone else should remember that there is a reason why flat boards took the Web by storm - most people prefer them because the vast majority of threads are only a few posts and for short threads, flat view is so much nicer.

ethank

Tue 6th Aug '02, 9:27pm

Well, since it will be optional to view threaded or unthreaded, it shouldn't be an issue.

I do think though, that threaded CAN work if done properly. Now, how to do that is really a good question :) Maybe use TheBrain :p

Martin CX

Fri 9th Aug '02, 8:56am

I like the way the threading has been done. No threading in the forum-display for me, please. :)

Burns

Fri 9th Aug '02, 11:47am

Originally posted by Martin CX
I like the way the threading has been done. No threading in the forum-display for me, please. :)
As i wrote above, there is a way to make both optional,
threaded/flat forum view and threaded/flat thread view

I hope you are not asking NOT to add an OPTIONAL threaded forum view ?

Arkham

Fri 9th Aug '02, 12:24pm

Originally posted by Martin CX
I like the way the threading has been done. No threading in the forum-display for me, please. :)

That's great, but it's not real threading then... Threading shows the full structure, not just one angle of it.

It's gotta be at both levels, forum and thread. Since threading is optional, why would it matter to you if you have it off?

dwh

Fri 9th Aug '02, 3:54pm

That I've not seen anyone solve yet...

I agree 100% that the cause of the success of forums (aka ubb) was the non threaded view...

but the threaded view has advantages too...

What I'd like to see is the following:

A very subtle line drawn emanating from the bottom of a post that has replies....and it branches off or stops depending on which was a reply which wasn't....(all of this within the Flat view)...and then, perhaps devote a row after the post with little icons for each reply to that post with alt tags which tell you the name of the reply poster and subject (if defined)....and the icon will have a number denoting how many replies are within that thread....click on the icon and you will be brought to that reply...

I'm not sure if my suggestion is clear or if it will look nice...it's just something I envision in my head but it may not look as nice in practice...

NORRITT

Fri 9th Aug '02, 8:32pm

I like that (http://212.122.148.49/pcx/findex_s.html) thread-view design very much

nuno

Sat 10th Aug '02, 12:46am

/me hates threaded mode anyways :p

samtha25

Sat 10th Aug '02, 12:28pm

Originally posted by NORRITT
I like that (http://212.122.148.49/pcx/findex_s.html) thread-view design very much
I get a very small frame for both the list of threads in the forum and the list of messages in the thread. Very awkward to use. If they wanted to use frames, I'd rather see something like Google does for the framed view of the newsgroups with the frame on the side. This has the advantage of showing the thread index while still showing more than one message at a time. But, customizing around frames would be difficult for many people.

grace819

Sun 11th Aug '02, 6:30am

If the vBulletin Team are really pushing for the threaded view as the standard for vBulletin 3, then I just hope that vBulletin 3 will also allow administrators and users to use the current vB format if they wish.

To be honest, this was the main reason why I actually purchased vB since I like -- no, LOVE -- the current thread format. But if worst comes to worst, I hope we'll have those two options available. :(

JamesUS

Sun 11th Aug '02, 8:25am

Originally posted by grace819
If the vBulletin Team are really pushing for the threaded view as the standard for vBulletin 3, then I just hope that vBulletin 3 will also allow administrators and users to use the current vB format if they wish.

To be honest, this was the main reason why I actually purchased vB since I like -- no, LOVE -- the current thread format. But if worst comes to worst, I hope we'll have those two options available. :(

We will never remove the view you see now. It will always be available.

grace819

Sun 11th Aug '02, 12:00pm

Originally posted by JamesUS

We will never remove the view you see now. It will always be available.

That's a relief! :) btw, I saw the preview of vB3 and if seeing is believing, I'm really excited to use it soon! Keep up the great work! :)

http://beta.vbulletin.com/vb3/index.php?

Andaas

Mon 12th Aug '02, 7:57pm

I'm not a really big fan of the threaded view, but I can see the benefits of it with regards to extremely large threads.

I'd be interested to see Tubedog's idea in a threaded view (sort of a mix between threaded and flat).

An idea that I just thought of would also be to offer the ability to view a thread flat from a specific post within the thread. This would allow someone to jump to flat view to read out the remainder of the subthread, but then be able to jump back out to threaded view and continue working through the posts.

tubedogg

Tue 13th Aug '02, 12:34am

This is a rough outline of my idea. Obviously it needs a lot of work but...

http://www.idlewords.net/thread.png

merk

Tue 13th Aug '02, 2:59am

Originally posted by tubedogg
This is a rough outline of my idea. Obviously it needs a lot of work but...

http://www.idlewords.net/thread.png

woot i star in tubedogg's idea! :D

Hrm i really need some real work to do :\

Arkham

Tue 13th Aug '02, 11:56am

Originally posted by tubedogg
This is a rough outline of my idea. Obviously it needs a lot of work but...

http://www.idlewords.net/thread.png

Yeah, that's a bit like the DCForums' script, but without the tree.

I can't remember if I posted it here or on beta, but I'd like to see something like that, but flat. i.e. no indents. It's like "sorted by conversation" or "flat-threaded".

Arkham

Tue 13th Aug '02, 11:58am

Originally posted by Andaas

An idea that I just thought of would also be to offer the ability to view a thread flat from a specific post within the thread. This would allow someone to jump to flat view to read out the remainder of the subthread, but then be able to jump back out to threaded view and continue working through the posts.

That's typically the way it works on other threaded systems, and the way I'd like to see it there.

You should be able to toggle into/out of threaded mode on the fly at every level, from forum, to thread, to individual post.

dwh

Tue 13th Aug '02, 12:40pm

The only threaded view that I liked kind of was google's....and I think vb should emulate that...see if it's possible to improve on it...

Although I would make threaded an option in my forum, I would probably make it really hard to find so that only expert users would use it...

The only aspect of threaded that I think makes a lot of sense and should be visible in both views, is this recent discussion...iow...the ability to reply to a post, and then to go TO the posts that are a reply to this one, and from there it says this is a reply to post X, and of course linkable

landig

Fri 29th Nov '02, 3:52pm

Originally posted by Martz
If I may explain myself.. ;)

Current vB thread forum: is great. But it is flat.

People talk about 1 thing, and 1 aspect of a subject. It is easy to go off topic, and when someone does you get a lot of stuff to read through your not interested in.

Threaded view: is good because it has more than 1 dimension. Peoples replies turn into a sub thread within the initial thread. This allows leafs of conversations to naturally flow, as people reply to a specific post, not an entire thread.

However, thread viewing is, for me anyway, time consuming and involves lots of clicking or going back in the browser. Conversation doesn't flow, so the impact of a threaded view is reduced. Nobody has been able to achive a unique and time saving way to allow threaded viewing of forums (or a single thread, with sub threads living in it) in an effcient manner before. I was impressed at vB 3.0s attempt to make this easier with the page not being displayed. However the flow of the conversation is lost as you only see 1 post at a time. I'm not entirely sure on how vB could or should solve this navigation problem. I still find its lots of clicks to read a single thread, however producing a way to look at a thread in many dimensions would certainly help.

Time for vB to break some ground and put on their thinking hats huh? :D

adding a small "reply to post #x would make it much easier. Normally you'd just go ahead and read but if you're not sure what the post is about you'd click on the link and then see what thread was replied to
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=59214

Razgo

Fri 29th Nov '02, 9:11pm

IMO i would hate to see vb3 held up to try make threaded views a new standard. I like what vb3 has done with threaded view option as it stands now.

if anything vb3 thread developement could be introduced at a later date.

ManagerJosh

Fri 29th Nov '02, 11:55pm

Originally posted by tubedogg
This is a rough outline of my idea. Obviously it needs a lot of work but...

http://www.idlewords.net/thread.png i really dislike the nested Look James.
THe best threaded view (including forums/threads) is the ones at SC3000.com forums

http://www.sc3000.com/forum

You need to click "Enable Frames" before it starts to work :)

Arkham

Mon 2nd Dec '02, 1:27pm

Originally posted by ManagerJosh
i really dislike the nested Look James.
THe best threaded view (including forums/threads) is the ones at SC3000.com forums

http://www.sc3000.com/forum

You need to click "Enable Frames" before it starts to work :)

I think the whole point is to avoid frames altogether. They would've used frames to begin with instead of moving to the text-area box, which is a better solution, currently.

Framed navigation isn't an issue with a stand-alone client, like a newsreader or Outlook, but I don't think it should be used in the browser interface.

rylin

Mon 2nd Dec '02, 1:36pm

Originally posted by tubedogg
This is a rough outline of my idea. Obviously it needs a lot of work but...

http://www.idlewords.net/thread.png Mmmmmmm
Nested view

ManagerJosh

Mon 2nd Dec '02, 3:48pm

Originally posted by Arkham
I think the whole point is to avoid frames altogether. They would've used frames to begin with instead of moving to the text-area box, which is a better solution, currently.

Framed navigation isn't an issue with a stand-alone client, like a newsreader or Outlook, but I don't think it should be used in the browser interface.

I don't mind the frame view as long as it handle the needs such as framed forums -_-

It does in some sense make life a tidbit easier....