New Navigation Menu - Page 3

[maui_mallard]

I actually didn't know that there was a chat room until I clicked it one day...

[thunderstorm98]

The New look of Navigation Menu is nice...It would be more better if there's no small switches (Hovers) between every menu.

[Dani]

I'm not sure I understand what you mean.

[~s.o.s~]

He is talking about those small images you have used in your navigation bar to let the users know it is a drop-down.

[Dani]

I don't think so. He says he'd rather not have hovers so I'm thinking he either means the drop down menus themselves or the way you hover over a button in the top row and it changes color?

[ndeniche]

i like the color changing hovers

[thunderstorm98]

He is talking about those small images you have used in your navigation bar to let the users know it is a drop-down.

Sanjay is True...See attachment I have red-marked to Indicate what Iam talking about.

[Nick Evan]

What I would really like is that the controlpanel would auto-refresh every x minutes. I usually have my laptop viewing my controlpanel on daniweb while I'm programming on my PC.
Sometimes you are helping someone that is on-line so he will respond very fast to my reply. I know it is only a mouse-click away, but if the CP would auto-refresh I would only have to glance at the laptop to see that someone replied in a subscribed thread.

But I know that's it's a lot of work for a (non existing) small problem.

Niek

[Dave Sinkula]

[deleted]

[Dani]

Dave, you've never asked about the control panel refreshing??

Unfortunately, though, Dave is right, that isn't really feasable. The CP is a very heavily accessed page. Having it auto-refresh would kill our servers ... Also, it would introduce the problem of people leaving the CP page up, and never being logged out of the website. It will also introduce the problem of people who are spending a lot of time on their CP page, reading through everything, and don't want it to refresh. It isn't exactly a page people would expect to suddenly refresh on them.

[Dani]

On second thought ... I have an idea that might satisfy both of you. Give me until the end of today.

[MattEvans]

@ niek_e : use Opera! You can setup auto-refresh every x-mins for any page. I dont have this enabled, mind -- I feel it'd be an uncessary strain on the server, since I'd likely forget it was on and leave it running for days/weeks/months on end.

[Dani]

On second thought ... I have an idea that might satisfy both of you. Give me until the end of today.

It ended up taking a lot longer than I planned but I think it was well worth it. Click on SUBSCRIPTION SPY in the top member menu (next to the link to your control panel).

[thunderstorm98]

Its realy nice feature Dani....Thanks.

[Nick Evan]

That's awesome! Thank you very much!

[Nick Evan]

I like the spy alot, but it sometimes gives me crap-threads. I didn't reply/subscribe to these threads and I've already read every post in it. If I have more info I'll repost!

[edit]I thought it maybe didn't like my subscription-list (300+ threads), so I removed all the subsciptions, but it didn't change anything..[/edit]

[WaltP]

I'm with neik. Looking at the list I have not even looked at the forum these threads/posts came from.

So what's this Subscription Spy supposed to be showing us? It's not threads we've replied to... :icon_confused:

[Dani]

Originally, the Subscription Spy only returned threads you were subscribed to or threads in forums you're subscribed to. However, this presented a problem because very few members actually subscribe to lots of threads, and for those of us who subscribe to forums that don't get a lot of new threads daily, nothing happened on the page 99.9% of the time.

I wanted the Spy to appeal to more people than not. Therefore, what I decided to set it to do is list all threads, but highlight your subscribed ones in yellow with a big border around them, so they're easy to spot and pick out.

The spy is completely in real time so the threads you're not subscribed to will not filter out or push out or delay your subscribed ones in any way. They just serve as filler until the next time someone posts or views one of your subscribed threads.

Hopefully, this will encourage people to spend more time on the page because, while they're waiting for someone to post in something they're subscribed to, they can watch other happenings on the site and perhaps find something that catches their eye.

You see, the majority of people (people like me, who don't subscribe to the overly popular C and C++ forums) were actually only having one new subscribed item come up every hour or two, which completely defeated the purpose of the real time coolness of the Spy.

[Dani]

Also note: When a thread title is in bold with an icon next to it, it means that there are new posts in that thread since you last visited it. All threads also say if you've ever posted in them.

But yeah ... to make a long story short, the non-subscribed threads just serve as filler while you wait for the next subscribed action to happen. As soon as someone posts in your subscribed threads, they'll show up right away and be highlighted in yellow.

[Dani]

On another note, there WAS a bug with it all day yesterday and this afternoon that caused it to constantly repeat what thread a member was viewing. That bug has now been fixed.

[Nick Evan]

I'm with neik.

thank you PaltW ;)

to make a long story short, the non-subscribed threads just serve as filler while you wait for the next subscribed action to happen. As soon as someone posts in your subscribed threads, they'll show up right away and be highlighted in yellow

I see.. But the 'filler threads' push the yellow ones down until they disappeare. So if there's a lot a activity on the site, and I'm not paying attention, my subscribed thread may have disappeared from the list?

[Dani]

The Spy is geared to be a real time overview of what is currently happening on the site at this moment, and has been designed to keep all threads from falling off the page for at least a minute or two, up to ten minutes, depending upon the time of day.

If you're not paying attention to it, and just want to see a list of updates to what you're subscribed to, the Control Panel shows you your recently updated thread subscriptions and the links in the sidebar show Today's Posts and New Posts in your subscribed forums.

However, the purpose of the Spy is to show what's currently happening, and there's always some give and take to appeal to the majority ... there are some people who are subscribed to sooo many things that a new item appears every minute, and there are other people who might only have a new subscribed item appear once a week. (i.e. a new member who is only subscribed to a couple of threads, or someone like me who doesn't subscribe to threads but instead subscribes to the Community Feedback forum).

But as I've said, I have ensured that new items don't appear so fast that they push old ones off too fast ... you should always have enough time to read it.

Since it's real time, if new items come in so fast that things start falling off too fast, it has been designed to automatically filter out as many of the 'Who's Viewing' items as it needs to in order to maintain a reasonable speed.

However, it's meant to display real time activity, so it's meant for you to keep an eye on it. Otherwise, it would just be an exact duplicate of the features already on the site.

[Nick Evan]

However, it's meant to display real time activity, so it's meant for you to keep an eye on it. Otherwise, it would just be an exact duplicate of the features already on the site.

Aha, I see. Well in that case: it works great because I saw that you were viewing this thread and then posted a reply :)
I also like the fading action at the bottom of the spy!

[edit] You were waiting for that reply weren't you? I saw you clicking the thread about 10 seconds after I replied :P

[Dani]

That's its purpose :)

[Dani]

Also note that when you hover over a thread title for a newly created post, the hover displays the contents of the post just written, so you can follow an active thread without leaving the Spy page.

Or, if you're waiting for new subscribed items to come up, if something quickly catches your interest, just hover over it to read it without leaving.

[Nick Evan]

Bravo!

[Dani]

> You were waiting for that reply weren't you? I saw you clicking the thread about 10 seconds after I replied
Yes, I was. I was at the Spy page where I saw YOU were reading this thread :)

[Nick Evan]

Same here :)

[Dani]

Lol :)

[Dani]

BTW, you should realize that from the second a workable version of the Spy was coded, I have been having wayyy tooo much fun with it. LOL.