h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Jim,

Would it be possible to list postings (in the X's postings screens) in order of most recent post that *they* made (as opposed to most recent post made by anyone in that thread)? Maybe make it an option at the top of the screen in a couple of radio buttons.

What, and throw away all that hard work I had to go through to pre-sort them and show un-replied-to posts first?

Oh, OK then.

Cool! Keep the other sort order as well, though - they're both useful for different things:

'Most recent post for specific person' enables you to find a particular person's most recent postings - almost 'where they are' if they're on-line.

'Most recent replies' lets you know which are the busiest forums currently being used (in which that person was once involved).

Oh, and while you're at it, could you install a kitchen sink? Mine's blocked.

How can I keep two independent sort orders?

Don't mind him--he's going out for drinks with Ant tonight. He probably started early.

Hm, two independent sort orders... how about user choice? You know, that thing that makes stuff really great for the user and 10 times as difficult for the programmer.

Back form the drinks now, what was Beeline going on about anyway? Strange boy if you ask me

I was thinking of a couple of radio buttons at the top of the screen - click one and the sort is redone with the order of your choice. The sort that is currently used could appear first as the default (it's what people are used to now), but the option to display in another order could be there as well.

Can that be done, or is it hard? Or a waste of time?!

I'm assuming, of course, that the listing is generated live when the page is called (by calling the database specifying a userID or something). Maybe each set of posting listing is stored as-is in the database and updated with every new post, but that would surely take up a lot of unnecesary space.

Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about, which is more likely!

No, those listings are live, which is why it's easy to change the sort order. Giving the user choice is more difficult. It'll need us to keep track of user preferences, which we don't do at the moment, but we will be doing soon. And the choice will extend into other areas, like how the forums are displayed.

Cookie monster alert, then!

While I have your attention, I also noticed that a User Page of mine called 'Jazz' has disappeared from my list. Don't know when, though. Does this bode poorly or well?

Forget that! I didn't realise the user pages list on my home page lists only the last 5.

D-apostrophe-Oh.