Quick Reply feature

Fine, lets do it this way. Do you like the quick reply feature. Bear in mind cosmetic issues should not be a reason to dislike it, as this can be changed (and I am looking at making it hidden most of the time until a quick reply button is clicked)

So, beyond that...

I voted no, but hidden by default is a vaguely decent compromise. What would make it even better is if clicking "Quick Reply" next to a post would make it become a child of that post. (Actually, it may -- I haven't tried it -- but I doubt it.)

Edit: Okay, I tried it. It sets the QR post's parent as the latest post.

Edit edit: Okay, what would be really cool is a hidden QR for each post, so that replying doesn't require loading a new page and the heirarchy would be kept. Not that I think that that's feasible.

I voted keep it, but only if it can be hidden by default.

-Mike

I voted no.

But I'm not really sure just what the difference is between Quick Reply and Reply;

If I just start typing in the QR box I presume that it replies to the last post. This can cause a problem with threading with lazy people responding to wrong posts. I suppose that even without QR that it is always possible to do that anyway by clicking Reply on the last post, but at least the perpetrator has to take an action to do that which helps minimise those occurrances.

So I presume that if I click the QR link on a specific post then the QR box becomes a reply to that post. The only thing that I can see missing compared to the standard Reply is all the extra font/color/UBB/icons that are new and that most people seem to dislike anyway. If I click 'Preview Reply' I get to add attachments (as with standard Reply) and those options come back anyway.

It's all un-necessary complication.

For my money I'd remove the automatic QR box, so that people had to choose a post to respond to, and then rework the post links such that 'Reply' takes you to the current Quick Reply box, (now linked to that post). Rework the 'Preview Post' text in the QR box to something like 'Preview/Attach/Additional Options' and remove the Quick Reply links!.

I presume that if I click the QR link on a specific post then the QR box becomes a reply to that post

It does not. It just jumps to the QR entry fields at the end of the page, which always responds to the latest post.

Edit: Actually, it doesn't even seem to jump. It's a link to javascript:quickReply(#), which doesn't seem to do anything. If I'm basing my response above on a bug, either in the BBS software or my browser, I apologize. Actually, IE even reports an error when I click the QR link next to posts.

Love it. but pushing it below the EntireTopic list might not be a bad idea.

Another suggestion would be to make it obvious that you're just replying to the last post. Instead of having it say "Quick Reply:", it could say "Reply to latest post ("The post title" by wfaulk)" or something.

I still think it's too big, though. If we could move the "Previous | Index | Next | Threaded" links above it, that would be better.

test

[EDIT]
Yep, that was a test of the QR link in Drakino's first post in this thread and it attributed as a reply to Bitt's last post.

IMO that makes QR an even bigger liability wrt thread integrity.

At least the links on the individual posts. I think the cause of that may be a JavaScript bug, though. I haven't really researched it.

Edit: Ah, yeah. Found the JS console in FireFox:

Error: document.getElementById("number" + num) has no properties

on the line

obj.Parent.value = document.getElementById('number' + num).innerHTML;

I voted keep it, but only if it can be hidden by default.

Currently I think that it only has the ability to be on or off. More than that, and I think it would require altering the BBS code. I don't know how much code altering that Tom is looking at doing at the current time. I hope at least some, because I think at least a few features that really bug me are hard-coded...

For now, I am going to kill it. For now this is due to the threading problem. I think the intent of the javascript code is to help fix that, but the problem is that it's not fully implemented. After all, this is a beta.

It will make a return in the future though. I personally like it as it allows me to see all the posts in the thread and address them without having to put the reply screen on a new tab.

I agree that being able to reply from the thread page is useful - that's part of the reason I made my suggestion earlier about keeping a post-specific QR instead of the standard reply.

Wow, now that people have pointed out that it replies to the latest post, I definitely say drop it. For some reason I was thinking that it (if viewed in thread mode) would reply to the first post in the thread. That's the only instance in which I would use it anyway. Now that I know otherwise, I definitely think it's a good idea to drop it.

I agree... I thought it was 'nifty' for a few minutes but after finding out that it only replies to the last post.. ditch it... Change my vote from yes to no...

Sean in NC

Quote:
Fine, lets do it this way. Do you like the quick reply feature.

Forgive my ignorance, but what is "the quick reply feature"? Is it something that came and went when I was on holiday last week?