Why was SNESdev relocated under "other retro dev"?

[Dwedit]

Subforums can be indented a little, but be first class entries on the boards list, not hidden away.

[tepples]

In order for any of us to have a chance of doing anything about it, first WhoaMan would have to upgrade phpBB from 3.0.10 to the latest version (currently 3.0.14), as I suspect that the community supports only the latest release. And then we might have to end up paying someone with experience building phpBB 3 themes and MODs, unless one of us has such experience.

• One possible change would be to retrieve the author and date of the newest post in each subforum and emit them as attributes prefixed with data- on the subforum link.
• Another possible change would be to allow each user to mark each forum as collapsed or expanded in that user's logged-in view of the front page.

zzo38, are you willing to learn PHP and phpBB and make one of these changes? If not, I could revert the use of third-level forums, and then we could document somewhere that we agree to live with the added scrolling when each new competition adds a second-level line.

[zzo38]

zzo38, are you willing to learn PHP and phpBB and make one of these changes? If not, I could revert the use of third-level forums, and then we could document somewhere that we agree to live with the added scrolling when each new competition adds a second-level line.

I do know PHP programming but have not worked with phpBB programming. If they can be indented as Dwedit suggested, by use of CSS classes, then the user can also use Stylish to collapse them, even if the forum software has no feature to do so.

[rainwarrior]

Installing greasemonkey and using custom scripts to modify the forum behaviour from the client side should not be considered a workable solution to a problem that a lot of regular users are having.

Did anybody ever complain about having to scroll too much on the main page, or did you just offer it off the cuff as a reason to use the subforum feature?

Lots of people are complaining about not being able to easily see the current status of forums they like to check every day.

I think a hierarchical forum structure sounds nice in theory; it would be nice if things were grouped and organized, but this particular implementation is ungood.


In its current state, I think the third-level forum feature is a good way to "archive" a subforum that is no longer active, but that's about it.

[lidnariq]

I am not trying to argue that the subsubforums are a good idea. I agree with rainwarrior here.

But I do want to point out that the subsubforums have class "read" and "unread" and adding the following CSS to the site CSS:

Code: Select all

a.read { color: grey; }
a.unread { color: red; }

is all that's necessary to make it visibly obvious. (More sophisticated CSS could prepend the "new posts" icon instead of turning the text red)

[zzo38]

To me, I would want to be able to see the time of the most recent message posted and who wrote it, so simply changing the CSS won't do this as it is now.

If indented subforums do display those information, then you can hide them by CSS and can be controlled by the "board style" setting in the user board preferences, so you can add a setting to there, might be one way to do quick customizations without needing to install other client-side software. Further customizations would then be possible by Stylish and GreaseMonkey by the users who do install client-side software.

[tokumaru]

Did anybody ever complain about having to scroll too much on the main page

I don't think I ever said anything about it, but a long list of forums does bother me a bit. Not all forums interest me, and I prefer to scan for orange icons in the forums I do follow than to use the "view unread posts" page where everything is cobbled together. If there are a lot of forums in the main page, finding the relevant orange icons takes longer. Also, the main page now fits entirely on my phone's screen, so I can quickly pick a forum without having to scroll (and I have been using my phone to browse the web a lot).

This is from the perspective of someone that doesn't closely follows any of the 3rd level forums though, and I understand that my opinion may be a little selfish, so I won't oppose if enough people want to bring their favorite forums back up.

[Sik]

Well if enough people got upset I suppose there's a reason. Not many people seem to be complaining about GBDev.

Also huh if there's a way to make the subsubforums show an icon in the front page then that sounds like that'd solve the biggest problem for most people (i.e. deciding whether to bother checking it for new posts).

[lidnariq]

Also huh if there's a way to make the subsubforums show an icon in the front page then that sounds like that'd solve the biggest problem for most people (i.e. deciding whether to bother checking it for new posts).

Ok, I bothered to look up how to do this.

Tepples or any other mod could add the following CSS to however phpBB does styles.

Code: Select all

a.read:before {
	content:url(/styles/subsilver2/imageset/icon_post_target.gif);
}
a.unread:before {
	content:url(/styles/subsilver2/imageset/icon_post_target_unread.gif);	
}

Anyone who wants to try it out before then can open the firefox/chrome Web Developer toolbar and try adding it to the results of "style.php"

[nitro2k01]

As part of this site's government, I can extend the analogy:

1. Government notices a problem that only it can solve, often a market failure.
2. Government intervenes to solve this problem at the cost of a creating a second problem.
3. Government describes how citizens can solve the second problem.

U.S. Affordable Care Act:

1. Growth of uncompensated emergency room care by who cannot afford private insurance or who have been turned down by private insurers for preexisting conditions.
2. Obamacare, which combines a ban on preexisting condition discrimination and subsidy for low-income private insurance with a "shared responsibility" tax on not being insured. It ends up creating a problem when state legislatures and governors controlled by the opposition party opt out of subsidizing insurance for many households below the poverty line, for fear that hard-line minarchists in the "Tea Party" will challenge the incumbent in the next primary election.
3. The tax code is interpreted to grant an exemption such that affected individuals need not pay "shared responsibility" tax.

On NESdev BBS:

1. Coming growth of Homebrew Projects.
2. Third-level forums, which end up hiding unread status.
3. "View unread posts" and suggestion of using Greasemonkey to add icons for unread subforums.

So what exactly would the market failure be in this case? That subforums take up too much visual space? Or is this actually an attempt to thwart the actual interest in those subjects, in favor of NES dev discussion? And to extend the analogy, should the "government" do this change even if no one in the "population" really thinks is a good idea?

[koitsu]

What the hell are we even talking about any more? Good grief.

[nitro2k01]

What the hell are we even talking about any more? Good grief.

I made an analogy... which escalated beyond belief.

[tepples]

I can extend the analogy:

1. Government notices a problem that only it can solve, often a market failure.

[...]
On NESdev BBS:

1. Coming growth of Homebrew Projects.

So what exactly would the market failure be in this case? That subforums take up too much visual space?

In my opinion, yes. I went back and edited item 1 to clarify that the time spent scrolling is the failure.

[zzo38]

OK so you can easily do by the CSS, the read/unread. But it won't tell you who and when is the last message! I would want these things to be added to the HTML emitted on the index page, even if they are hidden by default (such as in data- attributes or the title attribute); this way it can be accessed without downloading another page.

[tepples]

When I finish a conversation with my boss, I will try to find where to insert this fragment in the theme's CSS: whether it's something I can add to the Administration Control Panel or something I'd have to edit on the server's file system.

But I don't understand how knowing who posted the last message would help anyone. If the idea is that you would be more likely to open a topic if the user who posted the last comment is a user whose post you are expecting, then someone else could post a comment in a different topic and thereby destroy that information.


EDIT: During a break in the conversation, I found where in the ACP to paste in CSS.