MArcomage

It would be nice to have new posts since your last forum visit marked as 'New' when you scroll down a thread.

Also, a complete different matter, it has com to my attention that with Threads longer then 1 page the upper jump-to-page button does not work, while the one at the bottom works just fine.
Did more people encounter this?

Do you mean the "Go to select page" - You pick a particular page (eg 2) and press "select" button??

It doesn't work for me. I'm still stuck at the same page. No change. We have to use the "go to previous page (<)" or (>).

I agree with the call for these additions. I'm tired of trying to determine what time I last visited. ;)

Upper jump-to-page button does not work? Wow. I'm really stunned. I will try to fix it ASAP.

Now to the marking of the new posts. This feature was planned to be implemented when forum fist appeared, but we encountered design problems. You may first think that it is similiar to marking new messages. But once you think it trough, you'll see that it is a harder problem.

There are currently 3 options that we are considering:

1 - new posts will be those which were created in the time between your last recorded action before current login and current login (like in new messages)

2 - each thread will have information stored about whether it has new unread posts from the specific player's perspecitve or not.

3 - each post will have information stored about whether it has been read from the specific player's perspecitve or not.

Comparism:
1 is easy to implement (already implemented, but not used) and has no requirements on storing data. Problem is that it can only highlight threads that have some new posts. And even if you go into to thread and read new posts it will still mark the thread as highlighted (because with this little information it has, it cannot tell).

The other issue is that after you log out and if you didn't read some new posts, information about unread posts will be lost, so the threads that were highlighted (and not read) will not be highlighted after second login.

2 is harder to implement and has requirements of storing data. The amount of data is qual to number of players times number of threads. The problem is that this is not a constant. This number grows in time (with more players and more threads).

And it still cannot tell you which posts are new and which are not. It can only highlight the threads that contain new posts. It however doesn't suffer from issues mentioned above (issues about 1).

3 is hard to implement like 2, but has more storing requirements. We would need storing data equal to number of players times number of posts, wich is also not a constant. Since number of posts >> (much more) number of threads, this option needs, indeed, more data to be stored.

In this case we could highlight any new posts. So this option covers our needs perfectly, but has large storing requirements.

Which option to pick is an open discussion...

I don't know how big the storing problem part is. I only know that the site isn't slow to me at this moment. If implementing option 3 is gonna have some serious effect on the sites speed, Id say the Forum isn't the priority of this site and go the easiest way, nr 1.
If those effects are negligible, Id prefer 3.

As for option 2 (and 1 maybe)
It's pretty much half work, since the newest threads are already on top, and it only makes a difference when Mojko returns from vacation (;-)) and posts in more then 4 Threads, so all Threads with new posts don't fit in the Forum's main page.

Because of easy implementation and no database storing requirements, #1 was chosen and implemented. These changes should be applied soon.