Thanks, I'll start them installing on a clean version.
It took me 25 min ... I hope this time it will be more luck.

Time for me to contribute my 2/100 of a buck.

I've been lobbying Jelsoft for two years or more about delivering the OPTION of a threaded display at the forum level (forumdisplay.php). Back in October of 2001, vB developer "Freddie" stated that "threading" was going to be implemented in the next major vB release, which was expected to be out in Q1 of 2002.

Needless to say, it was pretty disappointing to see the half-baked implementation of "threading" [sic] that Jelsoft finally released nearly two years later.

This hack is a godsend. And it's getting better with each incremental release.

I'm not going to argue with anybody about whether "threaded views" are old-fashioned, or whether "flat views" are "better". The objective here is CHOICE. This hack allows vB3.X to finally offer users a CHOICE about how they wish forums to be displayed. And I think we can all agree that "choice = good".

My hat's off to Tom for finishing what Jelsoft only started. This should *definitely* be integrated into the core vB product. Should've been there ages ago. Tom's hack is good. It delivers on its promise. It is well documented, and Tom's support has been both prompt and professional.

Regards,

Bill

That said, here's my suggestion for v 1.7 of this delightful hack. It originated with some feedback from one of my users.

Currently, threads are always displayed *in their entirety*. This causes some minor problems when someone resurrects an old, long thread. The thread (with 50-100 individual posts or more) pops to the top of the page, and one must scroll down through the ancient material to find the one new post appended at the bottom (or somewhere in the middle).

This is especially problematic if the long thread is "sticky" -- since you ALWAYS have to do this scrolling. And doubly so if you have vB Options set to show sticky threads on ALL pages of a forum -- rather than just on the FIRST page.

I would like to see "Threaded Forum Views 1.7" take the other user-specified display options into account. That is, if I've asked to see only messages "from the last two days", then truncate the threads shown in forumdisplay.php acordingly -- much like WebBBS 5.12 does now. Let "Page 2" show the next two days, and "Page 3" show the two days before that.

I understand that this will cause some longer threads to appear in fragments -- in different locations. But when I click on a specific thread, the WHOLE thread is visible in the "threaded mode" showthread.php from Jelsoft. That provides me access to the parts of the thread that *aren't* on the 2-day forumdisplay.php output.

The biggest strength of WebBBS was in the virtually infinite personal choices it offered to each user in terms of customizing the display according to one's individual preferences. I would like to see "threaded Forum Views" become even more "WebBBS-like" in how it handles threads that span long time periods and many, many messages.

Bill

Let me say that I agree with you 100% on this. That said, it may be beyond my vb and PHP abilities to make these changes. Yet with such changes it would be a really 1st class hack ;)

Since the basic modification was so ridiculously simple to do hopefully Jelsoft will chose to fold it, along with the other changes, in to 3.1.

I'll finish by saying that I do plan to continue thinking about the best way to deal with the existing problems of long threads, etc.

Perhaps Darryl Burgdorf's Perl code in WebBBS 5.12 could provide some clues as to the requisite logic?

However limited you feel your abilities are, Tom, mine are infinitely more humble.

I seriously doubt that Jelsoft will EVER take threaded displays seriously.

EVERY time the issue has been raised, the discussion devolves into a debate about "which view is BETTER". They've never grasped that the issue is CHOICE.

In 1.6 instructions are updated too or they are as misty as before? ;)

As a vB/PHP hacker, I have to classify myself as "painfully amateur".

v 1.5 documentation was sufficiently clear & precise that even *I* could follow without assistance. ;)

The instruction (as misty as they may be :cheeky:) are the same except for the update on the template change. There's also a new set of images that perform better on dark backgrounds.

I was just getting ready to install this when I noticed on the VBulletin site that GOLD will be released late next week.

I'm going to hold off until GOLD is released and you smart guys know whether or not it works with it. I just follow the instructions.

Thanks again for creating this hack. I kow a lot of people will install it.

The files have been updated to allow the user to limit not only the number of threads but also the number of posts based on Thread Age Cutoff dates. The updated files (version 1.7) have also been verified to work with vb3 Gold.