This is probably a minor glitch involving growing pains, but I can't see an indication that a thread is unread or has a new post except in The Lounge, where it's working as it should. There haven't been that many new posts made but here, in the Feedback forum, all threads have been marked as read when I haven't actually seen them. That also happened with this thread and this one.

Maybe it's been fixed. I see the red numbers in "parens" for several forums. I haven't tried to find the exception that proves the "rule" however.

We're still tinkering with some of the forum settings, so if you see glitches like this, clearing cookies might help.

It seemed OK this morning (and I had not cleared cookies) so let's see if the glitch has disappeared.

I noticed it as well as new posts starting appearing in the new sections, but using the "Mark all read" feature at the bottom of the page cleared it up for me. It may re-occur again once new posts start appearing in the currently empty areas.

I tried your suggestion and so far, so good. I'll post back if the problem recurs.

I am seeing the red numbers in parentheses for unread threads and posts on the main page that lists all the forums, but they are absent in the "Replies" column when I go into any specific forum.

However, the threads which contain new replies do seem to have yellow folders (as opposed to white) and are grouped at the top of the list, and when I click on them I am taken to the first new post as expected, so the correct functionality is there.

I logged out, cleared cookies, and logged back in, but that did not bring back the red numbers in the individual forums.

Is anyone else seeing this?

Tacit has the option to show unread posts turned off to help improve server speed while he investigates the intermittent slow down.

Thanks, Knoodles! I saw that was the case after I posted! Another example of the failure to read the fine print before opening one's virtual mouth.

What may need to be done is show the unread messages WITHIN a folder in bold. This was a normal way in the MFIF interface. Now, we can only guess by the date and time of the last post.

Not so, if I understand you correctly. Do you mean threads with new posts by "unread messages"? ...and forum topic listing by "folder"? No time & date detective work is necessary. The folder icon in the left-hand column is your guide; yellow, or white.

Maybe I'm missing something here. But I don't miss the red numbers on the Forum topic list pages, probably because I never noticed them before. It's enough for me to see the numbers on the main page, and then to use the folder icon color to identify threads with posts since my last visit. I don't need to know how many, since it will open with the first post since my last visit as the topmost post on my screen. If I was really interested in the number, I could count them.

I liked the bold for threads with new posts, because it was easier to spot. It took me a while to notice the difference in folder icon color, because it's so subtle and because all the locked threads use padlocks that are yellow whether I've read them or not.

If color is supposed to indicate "read" vs "not read", it should indicate it accurately.

It also bothers me that the only way I can mark a thread "read" is to read it. Sometimes I can tell from the subject that I won't be interested, but the forum will still show "unread" until I mark every one of its threads "read". I know I can double-click on a forum's icon to mark all of its threads read; why can't I do something like that to mark a single thread read?

While I'm expressing my wants, what I'd really like to have is a "next unread" link within each thread's window, that would take me to the first unread message of the next thread that has one, and would be disabled if there aren't any such threads.

Combining those two would make my preferred reading style much more efficient. Open a forum. Scan the subjects for threads I know I'm not interested in, and mark them "read". Go to the oldest still unread thread. Read it and click "next unread" until it's disabled. Then I'm done with that forum.

It would work especially well if threads were sorted not by "date of last post" as they are now, but by "date of first unread post". That way, posting to a thread wouldn't bump it to the top of the list. As it is now, every time I post a reply I have to then go back up to the forum and reselect the now oldest thread, because "Next Topic" always does the wrong thing after you post.

The folder color is OK. It is yellow when there are unread messages and white when there are not. But when you open a folder, you do not see which posts have been read and which have not. Previously, unread messages were also with red numbers like the folders and the titles were bold. This was easy and efficient. Now it is guesswork only. Hopefully, this is not such a difficult thing to change; I would be happy just with bold titles.

There's another alternative that might work for you. At the bottom of every page, there is a "Mark all read" button. Once you're done, hit that, and you start with a fresh slate next time.

There's also a potential drawback, with the above or any other strategy: someone could be composing while you're "clearing". My experience has been that once I open a forum, whether I open every topic with unread posts in it or not, when I return, it seems that the forum has been "cleared" for me. That is, I don't see any yellow folders down the list following a white folder. All the yellow ones have risen to the top.

To minimize the chance that someone submits a post that will be "cleared" by my exiting, I refresh the main page when I've gone through the forums, and look to see if that indicates any new posts in the forums I've just visited.

Thanks for the clarification. So it's the individual posts in a thread you've opened that you're saying require guess work. Is that right?

It's not guess work for me. As I stated above, when I open a thread, the first unread post is at the top of my screen. It never fails, if my curiosity gets the best of me and I think I might have missed something, when I scroll up to the previous post and read it, I remember having read it before. If there was ever an indication of which posts are new within each thread, I never noticed it. (in the MFIF, of course)

On a related note.... Other sites allow you a choice when opening a thread. You can choose to open it with the original post at the top of your screen, or the first post added since your last visit. (as I've described above) Each topic has a small icon next to it for you to make the latter choice. If you want to start at the top, you click the topic title. Here, clicking the topic title is the only way in, and you get the latter behavior. If I want to start at the top, I have to scroll to it. This only comes into play if there's a topic I've not visited, and for some reason decide I'm interested after all.

Gregg, forget it. I am really wrong. BUT, it needs to be explained somewhere in the setup for everybody. I did not realize that each post within a folder also has some kind of folder under a padlock sign. The color of the folder also reflects unread (yellow) - read (gray). So, no problem. Just look for the padlock and the folder color beneath it.
Tacit did it right, it was just not that intuitive compared to MFIF.

Me too!

The bold as an indicator of unread posts is part of the UBBCentral style that we used at MFIF: perhaps tacit could install it here (according to that thread it works in 7.5.3 though apparently requires some tweaking). Or maybe he could incorporate the bold into the style he made for FTM.

Personally I miss both the bold and the number of new posts in red. Having only the yellow folder icon is driving me batty.


IMO that's a feature request worth submitting in UBBCentral's Feedback & Suggestions forum. Maybe the rest of your wants too.

I'm not sure, but I think you mean "each topic within a forum also has some kind of folder under a padlock sign."

If I've got that right, the folder is simply a read/unread indicator. (As you noted, gray means read, yellow means unread.)

The padlock appears on locked topics. You're seeing one at the top of the read/unread indicator column in every forum right now only because dk's locked welcome post is currently displayed in every forum and is stickied so it stays at the top of the topic list.

You guessed right! The padlock is just an easy orientation point.
I basically mean that everything is already there but an explanation of forum symbols in the FAQ would be great. Otherwise, this info could be included in the New user guidelines that Joe recently proposed to add.

Forget it? No way! I don't really know what you guys are discussing with this "padlock" icon. I've seen the icon, I think. I don't pay much attention to it I guess.

But, and this is the exciting part(!), I just noticed in this thread, at the top of each new post is a little black rectangle with the yellow letters NEW in it. Was that there from Day 1????

Yep, and MFIF had it too.

And so the rejoinder to my amazing discovery is, "I guess it's not very effective if you just noticed it!" But, it's even more amazing then that I was the first to mention it in this discussion.

Maybe black is the wrong "color".

Gregg,

No doubt UBB.threads, like any bulletin board software package, handles some aspects of the user experience better than others. And no doubt you, like most of us, are more irritated by some perceived deficiencies than by others.

The fact is, though, that between the MacFixIt Forums and FineTunedMac, we've been using one or another version of UBB.threads since 2001 (and yes, there's been a New badge on unread posts within a thread since then). The vast majority of long-time members are familiar with this software. One of the reasons we choose to use this software at FTM—as I've said before—is so that neither the members nor the staff need to put much time into mastering the software; it makes more sense to put the time into creating a resource which will serve the Mac community.

Due to a kind referral or two from the wider Mac community, we've added more than 70 new members today, bringing our total membership to over 170 as of this posting. I'm sure a number of these folks will be irritated by some aspects of our software. But I'm even more certain that these folks didn't sign up in search of great forums software; they signed up in search of a community of knowledgeable Mac users who can answer questions and provide information about Mac-related issues.

I don't mean to belittle your concerns, just to sketch a little of the context in which the staff here is receiving them. This software is a known quantity; we're very busy dealing with unexpectedly rapid growth. Fine-tuning the members' thread-tracking experience just doesn't have the same priority right now as developing some content to keep the interest of first-time observers.

If you want to delve further into the possibilities yourself, I suggest becoming a member of the UBB.threads Community over at UBBCentral, where these kinds of issues are explored in great depth.

The problem I have with the padlock icon is that it's yellow, suggesting that the thread it marks has unread posts in it.

Right now, with only a few exceptions, the only locked threads are the "Welcome" threads at the beginning of each forum, but as time goes on there will be more. I can make the operational assumption that they're all read, but that could make me miss something important. What if new information (in the form of a new post) was added to one. Presumably only an admin (or maybe a moderator) could do that, but if they did it would be because the new information was important. There should be some visual indication that it contains unread material. Perhaps the padlock could turn yellow? Oh, wait. It already is.

I'd think that a locked thread in the middle of a bunch of threads with new posts also has new posts?

Or does locking a thread move it up in the Index in and of itself?

If you've interpreted my posts as expressing dissatisfaction, then I've not communicated well. In this thread, I've been trying to understand where others are coming from, and offering other options within FTM's UBB capabilities, as well as bringing up things I've seen elsewhere. The point of the latter was not to suggest changing software packages, or to complain about the software being used here, or to "argue" that it is inferior to others. The point was to find out if this software could be set up to do some of those things in the same or a similar way.

I am not irritated by features of this software. I've been using it happily for the past year. I've only brought up some points and questions since the switch from MFI to FTM because of the "newness" of this transition, and others have been doing the same. I understand that there are other priorities, and though I had that in mind with every post in the Feedback forum, I didn't always express it, nor have others. I'm not sure why you've addressed me directly like you have. I didn't orginate this topic! And if you read my posts again, you will sense the underlying theme of "I don't see what the big deal is. I can follow the cookie crumbs just fine with the way it's set up." :puzzled:

(Ok, the dearth of smilies here is a theme. I'd like more, but I'm not irritated that there aren't very many to choose from. It's mildly disappointing, to be sure, but not a big deal.)

A locked thread takes the same place in the forum hierarchy as an unlocked thread. It's treated the same way as any thread without new posts, because no further posts can be added. If such a thread contains one or more posts you hadn't yet read before it got locked, you wouldn't know without checking.

A thread can also be made 'sticky', which makes it stay at the top of the forum without requiring the addition of new posts. The exclamation point icon after the thread title indicates its stickyness.

Finally, threads can be both locked and 'stickied'.