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Following Discussions

KimL

KimL

LostCousins Member
I love the forum and I have a wee request - not sure if it is possible. Is there anyway to "follow" a country like you can follow a discussion? I would love to be alerted to new resources available in the counties or countries I am interested in.
There are so many links and discussions to look at and read I am slightly obsessed a bit like researching my family tree.
 
Hi Kim,

The only way I can think of at the moment is to use the RSS feed at the level you want.

However the RSS feed doesn't seem to work in all browsers.
 
I have been looking at many discussions over the past few weeks and one thing I notice is that when you get to a thread on any page other than page 1 and enter a discussion you should use your browser back key to exit rather than using the forum list otherwise you are always directed to page 1 not the page you were on. Is this correct?
 
Not quite sure what you're asking. The browser back button will always take you to the previous screen you were on.
Pressing the forum button will take you to the forum list.
 
KimL said:
I have been looking at many discussions over the past few weeks and one thing I notice is that when you get to a thread on any page other than page 1 and enter a discussion you should use your browser back key to exit rather than using the forum list otherwise you are always directed to page 1 not the page you were on. Is this correct?
Click to expand...


Using the browser back key when browsing a forum is actually a really BAD idea. As that means you are viewing what the state of the forum was before you clicked the item. As you have just read an item before you clicked back the browser will be showing the wrong state of the forum. I cannot see how this could ever be a good idea.

Thus I suspect you are using the back button because you cannot find how to do what you want. Can you describe what you are trying to achieve in more detail please your description isn't clear enough to understand where the problem occurs.

It may help to say that when you goto a thread with new posts (title will show in dark bold blue), clicking on the thread title will by default take you to the first unread message. If there is nothing new in the thread (title will show in light blue) clicking on the thread title will take you to the first page.
 
Hi Alexander, I agree with you although I am having trouble trying to explain it to make sense. Basically as a new user I was looking through previous discussions so I could try not to bring up something which had already been highlighted. I have found an example:
Go to "More English Resources"
Click on "Page 2"
Select "Proceedings of the Old Bailey"
How do you now return to Page 2 to read other threads/discussion?
I cannot seem to find a direct route without going via Page 1 again unless you use the browser back button.
 
Hi Kim, in the scenario you've described, it seems the only option you have available to go back to page 2 is the browser back button. All the other options as you rightly say, take you back to page 1.
 
This is where tabbed browsing helps. Instead of a left click on "Proceedings of the Old Bailey", do right-click, choose Open in New Tab (exact words vary between browsers). When you've read the thread, just close the tab, and what should then be displayed is your previous tab, i.e. "Page 2". Note that your browser may also have a keyboard shortcut for Open in New Tab, e.g. Ctrl-leftclick to open but remain on previous tab, and Ctrl-Shift-leftclick to open and display new tab. The former helps if you want to open multiple new tabs (e.g. for all the unread threads you want to read) - great for keeping up with the LC Forum :).
 
Hi Tim, KimL,

This seems to be a "feature" common to several other forums of which I have experience. It may just be the software that drives the forum that's at the root of the situation, which I too find annoying.

To some extent the problem might be overcome by setting the software (if possible) to open a new browser window or tab (preferably) and switching to it with the chosen thread. When read the window/tab can be closed, leaving the right page of the index in the main window, though not updated just as if you had used the back button but you have the right index page at least.

Sadly none of the other forums do this either, except when you move right away from the board you are presently reading, so it would seem possible that it might work if set up this way. In this day of pretty well universal tabbed browsing, it seems silly not to exploit fully this feature of the mainstream browsers.

Hope this is of interest.

Alan
 
KimL said:
Hi Alexander, I agree with you although I am having trouble trying to explain it to make sense. Basically as a new user I was looking through previous discussions so I could try not to bring up something which had already been highlighted. I have found an example:
Go to "More English Resources"
Click on "Page 2"
Select "Proceedings of the Old Bailey"
How do you now return to Page 2 to read other threads/discussion?
I cannot seem to find a direct route without going via Page 1 again unless you use the browser back button.
Click to expand...


Ah I understand now. You aren't talking about navigating a thread as I had though but navigating a list of topics on a forum. Yes I can see the issue, unfortunately that is the way the forum works.
 
Opening in a new window or tab would solve this issue, maybe we could see if its doable here and if people actually want it.
 
Hi Tony, it looks like there's an unwritten standard: external links open in a new window and internal links open in the same window. I can see the logic in that, when people offer you links, they don't want you to navigate away from the original site.
And as Alexander already mentioned, I can see the logic for internal links opening in the same window, so that the forum is always showing you the latest data dependant on which discussions you've viewed.

As Alan and yourself have mentioned, there is a way of opening a discussion in a new window, should you want or need to, which is supported by the majority of browsers. Maybe we should ask the members after Go Live and see what they think and prefer?
 
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