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View Full Version : Search for New Posts Page Count Keeps Changing



delsbrother
Feb-27-2010, 3:06pm
In the old version of the software, if a search for new posts brought up several pages of posts, you could click on each successive page of posts until you came to "the end" and there were no more new posts.

Now, however, clicking on the next page of the search in sequence appears to re-run the search. At least, the number of pages appears to change as you click on them.

For example, the first search for new posts might bring up 6 pages. You scan through the first page of posts, then hit the link for page 2, and suddenly there are now 8 pages of posts. Then you scan through page 2, and hit the link for page 3, and now there are only 4 pages of posts.

Not sure if I'm describing why this might be happening correctly (and I'm not sure if this affects the actual results of the search), but I don't remember this behavior in the old forum.

Scott Tichenor
Feb-27-2010, 4:21pm
I'm unable to replicate this and if it is a bug then it will impact everyone and it should be easy to spot. I'll leave this open for now and let others that experience this weigh in.

delsbrother
Feb-27-2010, 8:19pm
I could have sworn I experienced a jump from higher to lower as in my OP, but now when I try it it just seems to add one page to the search results (i.e. first is page 1 of 5, then click on 2 and it's 2 of 6, 3 of 7, 4 of 8, etc.).

In any case, I never seem to reach "the end" where in the past there was a demarcation line that said something like, "the following threads are older than your last visit but contain unread posts."

My search's post count at the bottom of each page also seems to change - it would start by saying something like, "Results 1-20 of 100" then as you click through to subsequent pages the number of threads keeps increasing - page 7 says, "Results 121 to 140 of 220."

ColdBeerGoCubs
Feb-28-2010, 12:32am
I get that too. Says 1-5, then 2-6, then 3-7 etc.

ColdBeerGoCubs
Feb-28-2010, 12:34am
I just searched the same thing, and it came up 1-6, then 2-6, then 3-7, 4-8. I used to run a few php and bb boards so this stuff is always interesting, though I don't know why.

rgray
Feb-28-2010, 5:00am
Looks like there are always 25 pages of new posts (500 total). It also looks like that posts only disapear from the NEW POST search when you actually open the post and read it. At least that is what happened with this particular thread.

jim_n_virginia
Feb-28-2010, 9:00am
I get that too. Says 1-5, then 2-6, then 3-7 etc.

me too ...

delsbrother
Mar-01-2010, 8:55pm
Well, one way to make the "new posts" search meaningful is to scan all 500 threads and then mark them all as read. At least that's what I did. Now I only have one page of new posts, so I have an "end" again. I'll let you know if it works after a couple of hours..

delsbrother
Mar-01-2010, 11:44pm
Looks like there are always 25 pages of new posts (500 total). It also looks like that posts only disapear from the NEW POST search when you actually open the post and read it. At least that is what happened with this particular thread.

Just to expand on that idea, my experiment has shown the list of "New Posts" doesn't update based on whether anything actually "new" happened since your last visit - it simply continues to have EVERY new thread added to it, probably until it reaches the limit of 500 threads (after which it probably dumps the oldest one). It also doesn't matter if you logout and then log back in; it's just listing them in order, chronologically, until you open the thread and read it.

In other words, it doesn't seem like it's giving me a list of threads I haven't seen yet, it's giving me a list of threads that I haven't read yet.

I suppose as a workaround I could simply view Today's Posts, or Mark All As Read everytime I leave the site. But in the past, New Posts would actually remember where I was from a previous session and only show me threads that had been added or changed.

rgray
Mar-02-2010, 4:50am
Yep - looks like the way it works. I didn't know about the Mark as Read capability which I found and used. I know it won't be as useful as the previous functionality.

danb
Mar-02-2010, 6:13am
I just searched the same thing, and it came up 1-6, then 2-6, then 3-7, 4-8. I used to run a few php and bb boards so this stuff is always interesting, though I don't know why.

It does that if there are more pages than fit in the layout at the bottom, ie you'll see something like this:

first 3 4 5 6 7 last

if you are on page 5 out of 10.

The intention of the new posts is to show you what's been added since you last read the forums. If you're on multiple times a day that's probably the best way to keep up, otherwise you might want to just subscribe to threads you find interesting etc.

delsbrother
Mar-02-2010, 5:25pm
The intention of the new posts is to show you what's been added since you last read the forums.

Except, it doesn't do that. It lists EVERY thread that's been posted, including the ones that you have already seen (but not opened) in the order they were posted to the forum. That wasn't the way it worked before; in the past, if nothing had changed in a thread you had already seen (but not opened) then it would NOT appear on the New Posts search (since there were no new posts to the thread since you had last visited). Now you have to explicitly mark the thread as "read" to remove it from the search results. Otherwise, the results just keep racking up until, as Bob discovered, there are 25 pages of them.

This is the real issue; my OP was just a symptom of this problem. The pages keep rolling over because people are continuously adding posts to the list. Since you can't make the ones you don't care about go away until you mark them "read," there will always be 25 pages of them.

I can deal with the workaround, but it sure would be nice to have that old functionality back. It really made browsing easier for those of us who always have the Cafe open in a little window whilst we (cough) work on other things. :)