Tool Tips/mouseover Text, First Thread Text

[philbey]

Yo Iro!

 

i frequent the Chopcult.com forums a bit. They've got a cool thingo whereby if you mouse over a topic title in the forum page, it displays the first X number of characters from the first post.

 

It's pretty handy when you're flicking through and thinking "can I recall this? Can I be bothered opening it again?".

 

What's the likelihood of getting that here? I'm guessing it's all about the forum engine?

 

have a geez, www.chopcult.com/forum

[irokin]

It's not hard to do BUT there's a couple of issues to consider. I'll explain more when I get home. There is a solution using AJAX though if you can handle a 0.2 second delay between mousing over and seeing the data.

[Teddy]

i think this isnt a bad idea, but i would recommend the use of a master switch in your user specific settings to either ON or OFF for this function. : )

[Xany]

yesm to the master switch....its on the supra forums i visit....it shits me, i want to punch someone in the undies because of it.

Edited February 26, 2010 by Xany

[towe001]

Ditto, like the idea but i'd also like to be able to turn it off.

But going off subject. The one thing that gives me the proverbial is going onto a forum that i'm not a member of a and coming across a thread of interest and getting "Attached Images" click on one and get "please sign in to view image"

 

Back on subject - instead of the master switch in your user panel can it be placed on the main forum page ? Thinking of it being a bit easier to be able to turn it on/off, less page refreshing, no need to jump to the user panel and then back again. Just click a button, page refreshes and you have what setting you want at the time.

[irokin]

But going off subject. The one thing that gives me the proverbial is going onto a forum that i'm not a member of a and coming across a thread of interest and getting "Attached Images" click on one and get "please sign in to view image"

 

Likewise which is why on RC guests can view everything members can. I see no benefit in forcing someone to signup for an account when they have no intentions of returning. Sure it saves a bit of bandwidth but we're in the 'business' of providing information, if that informations not easily/instantly available then whats the point of providing it?

 

 

As for the original idea, I had started writing a big long technical explanation but then I realised that to anyone but me and a few others its just going to be white noise. There are some things on the technical side that need consideration. Yes I will let you turn it off but it probably wont be from the front page.

[philbey]

Don't stress too much about it. Delay between mouseover and the text displaying is a good thing anyway.

[irokin]

Yea. Basically it saves me having to run 40 SQL querys every time someone looks at a forum index. If I do it using AJAX you only have to run 1 maybe 2 SQL queries (one to get the data perhaps another to check permissions) when someone mouses over a topic. Makes more sense than doing 40 SQL queries when less than 10 or maybe zero of them are actually going to be used. Of course theres other ways of doing it but I think AJAX probably makes the most sense. Reduces data consumption and CPU cycles.

 

Lemme get the chat thing out of the road first. If I start taking on multiple projects I wont get anything finished.