jeremyotten wrote:...We need the unread topic thing! yeha!
Thanks for the input.
This mod does two separate things for posts (in addition to the functionality it adds for pms):
- it gives the user a link to see a list of unread posts (and toggles the link text depending on whether there are or are not unread posts)
- it allows a user to mark a post as unread.
I am certain that giving the user a link to see a list of unread posts is useful (I'm surprised that was left out of hphbb3) but the part I wasn't so sure about was giving the user the ability to mark a post as unread (since phpbb3 already allows a user to bookmark a topic).
My sense is that it is a useful thing for a user to be able to mark a post (and the rest of the topic) as unread when he hasn't finished reading it, because:
- marking a post unread allows the user to specify exactly which post is the place where he stopped reading (bookmarking a topic only tells you that a topic is of special importance, but that's of limited use if the topic is very long with many pages)
- unread flags show up right on the index so a user won't forget to go back and read the posts he hasn't yet finished (while bookmarks are accessible only in the ucp and can be easily forgotten).
As I think about this, it seems clear that this is useful. The reason I was unsure before was because I mistakenly thought that the bookmark feature bookmarked a specific post rather than a full topic (it would be a harder call if you could bookmark a particular post). And by the way, it seems odd that there is not a bookmark feature for individual posts...if and when I move to phpbb3 with my live boards I may do a mod for that if someone hasn't already done so.