Mark -

I love the MCO Pulse, as it does a great job of keeping me distracted at work. Out of the corner of my eye, I can always see if something of interest is being discussed. One small suggestion? As the Pulse is popping up for the most recent entries are added to a topic, would it be difficult to have the LAST page of the topic pop up as opposed to the first? Not sure programmatically what's involved, but when a new entry comes in to a multi-page topic, it takes a couple of extra clicks to get to the last page. Just an idea that popped into my head, while I should have been doing my own programming. Back to work.

Keep up the good work and thanks for all your effort.

T J

 

I'll second that...well said, miniSail and it would also be great if the same happened with the "5 Recent Topics" on the left of this screen...keep up the good work Mark.

 

heehee, if I didn't have my MCO Pulse running, I woulda missed this thread. Going to the last page of a thread would be very useful, but like miniSail said, I dunno what would be involved programming wise.

* nerd talk to follow *
Take a look at the querystring in your URL when you're looking at a multipage thread. Each "page" in a thread consists of 25 entries. So if you go to page 2, you'll see a start=25 entry in the querystring. The number 25 is prbly administratively set somewhere, and the number of pages a thread has is the number of posts divided by 25.
phew.. so figure out what the last page is, you would have to do:
"thread post count" mod 25. Get that number, multiply it by 25, and you'll be at the start of the last page. If the mod is 0, there's only 1 page and sticking start=0 in the URL won't affect the display

did i make sense?

 

>>* nerd talk to follow *
>>Take a look at the querystring in your URL when you're looking at a multipage thread. Each "page" in a thread consists of 25 entries. So if you go to page 2, you'll see a start=25 entry in the querystring. The number 25 is prbly administratively set somewhere, and the number of pages a thread has is the number of posts divided by 25.
>>phew.. so figure out what the last page is, you would have to do:
>>"thread post count" mod 25. Get that number, multiply it by 25, and you'll be at the start of the last page. If the mod is 0, there's only 1 page and sticking start=0 in the URL won't affect the display
>>
>>did i make sense?

Yes, you made sense, and all that 'geek-speak' made me feel like I'm at work.

Oops, wait, I AM at work!!

 

>>* nerd talk to follow *

Actually Sambusik, looking at your geek-speak, depending on how you wanted it to appear, you could actually set the '###' in 'start=###' to the last post number, which would take you directly to the last post. Admittedly, you wouldn't be able to see the posts above that one on that page to potentially put the post in context.

T J

 

good point, the most useful thing (if you're following the thread) would be to take you to the beginning of the last page right?

Consider this thread (clicked on it straight from MINI Talk)
https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...ic=6434&78

btw, I hadn't noticed that it sticks the post count at the end

I experimented...
https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...8&start=25
takes you to the second page

https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...8&start=78
or any number, would take you to that specific post. If the post happened to be the last post, only that would be displayed.

Sticking any random start= will mess with the paging and give you back "unpredictable results"


btw, what kinda stuff do you work with? languages, tools, etc?

 

I'm not a Web Developer, although I considered playing one on TV. I work with an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) package called JDEdwards. Mostly technical, some functional. (Tech - development, Func - application based, i.e. Sales Order, Inventory, etc).

But, I've found that when you boil it all down, language, platform, etc. - It's generally the same thing - syntaxes may change, but logic is consistent.

T J

 

This has been asked of Mark in the past. At least in this thread, if not elsewhere. Not sure if he had time to look into it - and I forgot to remind him like a said I would in that thread (so thanks, guys, for the reminder!)

As far as the code goes, I have no idea how to have it dynamically create the appropriate link, but when combining the post count and the page count information you could easily determine what page to show. (This also assumes that there is some way to call the last post ID#.... no idea if that exists either.)

For Instance:

Last post ID# = 90

Page count = 25

90/25 = 3.6

So post 90 is on page 3. The algorithm wouldn't be hard to figure out.

Anyhow, once that is established, you set start= to 75 to see the whole page containing the last post. The real trouble is the dynamic part. Outta my league now.

 

Things have been really busy but I had a couple of minutes to look into this. I made some mods to the Pulse that should do what everyone is asking for (click on an item in the Pulse and go to the top of the page where that post resides). Play around with this and if it is what you intended I'll update the last 5 posts block to act the same way. Thanks!

Mark

 

>>Things have been really busy but I had a couple of minutes to look into this. I made some mods to the Pulse that should do what everyone is asking for (click on an item in the Pulse and go to the top of the page where that post resides). Play around with this and if it is what you intended I'll update the last 5 posts block to act the same way. Thanks!
>>
>>Mark

Looks good so far. Thanks Mark!

p.s. Couldn't you make the 5 list a 15 list? And the pulse a 25 list? You could probably get rid of the 5 top active forums section, as it is pretty meaningless to me (others?).

 

>>p.s. Couldn't you make the 5 list a 15 list? And the pulse a 25 list? You could probably get rid of the 5 top active forums section, as it is pretty meaningless to me (others?).

Its not a big deal to change the top 5 list on the site to something more but I hesitate to make it longer since there is limited real estate on the page to do so. The original intent of the Pulse was to offer the same thing, make it a bigger list, and have it be more dynamic. Currently the pulse reflects the last 15 posts. If everyone would like to have a longer list (25 posts) let me know and I can quickly make the change. Perhaps one of these days I can make this user configurable.

Mark

 

If you got rid of the top five most active forums, there'd be room for five more active topics. Also if you move "who's online" above it, then the topics list could be made a little longer without worry since most pages of posts display much longer than the side bar does.

 

I think it'd be nice to have the forum name beside each topic name in MCO Pulse.

Keep up the awesome work!

 

last 15 is good, that way it doesn't eat up too much desktop space. I'd toss the "what's new" and the "basics" in favor of a Forums, Home, and PM link

Cheers,
Ryan