PlanetsCentral

When browsing the forum it is a bit difficult to see which topic/thread/forum has something new and which doesn't.

First the symbol is a (dark) blue fringe of the balloon on a (slightly darker) blue background. I did not notice it until right now, and its still kind of hidden even if I look right on the spot. May be another color, say a dark green may be more convenient.

Second the fringe stays until I read each and every thing I did not read so far. Even if it's 3 months old stuff I am obviously (cause I did not care in 3 months) not interested in. So may be there is a way to only mark threads as not read when they are in some way up to date (3 days, a week, half month, something like that). Well it's probably something less important until the forum grows a bit and becomes more crowded.

There is a button named "mark forum as read" on top of the topic list.

But I would appreciate a little more highlighting as well.

First the symbol is a (dark) blue fringe of the balloon on a (slightly darker) blue background. I did not notice it until right now, and its still kind of hidden even if I look right on the spot. May be another color, say a dark green may be more convenient.

That's probably more a matter of taste because I consider the forum icons one of the better-looking part of the site :-) But its entirely possible that the visibility depends on your monitor. I'm not sure whether adding more colors would work; I don't want this to look like an angry fruit salad.

I originally tried using different colors for the balloons (yellow vs. white). This is how other forum skins solve it (e.g. at CircusMaximus). However, personally I found that confusing because I never know which are the new ones.

I'll try whether I can make the glows asymmetric, maybe that catches the eye.

Second the fringe stays until I read each and every thing I did not read so far. Even if it's 3 months old stuff I am obviously (cause I did not care in 3 months) not interested in. So may be there is a way to only mark threads as not read when they are in some way up to date (3 days, a week, half month, something like that). Well it's probably something less important until the forum grows a bit and becomes more crowded.

I plan to expire the unread markers someday, but more with the intention of saving database memory. The user feature is the "mark this forum read" button.

--Stefan

Big ones for comparison:

That's probably more a matter of taste because I consider the forum icons one of the better-looking part of the site :-) But its entirely possible that the visibility depends on your monitor. I'm not sure whether adding more colors would work; I don't want this to look like an angry fruit salad.

I originally tried using different colors for the balloons (yellow vs. white). This is how other forum skins solve it (e.g. at CircusMaximus). However, personally I found that confusing because I never know which are the new ones. [...]

Big ones for comparison:

Yeah fruitsalad is lame (some are tasty though). I am totally with you there. :D

About the monitorguess I think that's not the problem here. The marker is way better to see than let's say google adds. It simply slipped through my personal (brainmade) objectfilters until yesterday.

Maybe the assymetric thing does work. I can't imagine how that would look like. Another way might be to simply make the unread symbol bigger. I guess that's also a very intuitive way.

Maybe the assymetric thing does work. I can't imagine how that would look like. Another way might be to simply make the unread symbol bigger. I guess that's also a very intuitive way.

That's actually a brilliant idea, I'll play around with it this weekend.

--Stefan

It would be great if a similar markup could be created for folders. I just now noticed that there are a lot of messages concerning the second game.

Two things: - It would be nice if the thread title worked the same as the tiny "unread post"-Link. Maybe rename the tiny link to "first post" or "first page" and swap the functions.

- And I just noticed that there appears to be no way to simply write in a thread without replying to somebody. This might be on purpose, but I would also like a simple "write in this thread".

Two things: - It would be nice if the thread title worked the same as the tiny "unread post"-Link. Maybe rename the tiny link to "first post" or "first page" and swap the functions.

phpBB-based forums I used so far worked similar to this one (small icon for first unread post).

How about making the icon a "first unread post" link?

- And I just noticed that there appears to be no way to simply write in a thread without replying to somebody. This might be on purpose, but I would also like a simple "write in this thread".

Internally, the forum has a tree structure, just like a newsgroup discussion. Someday I want to render this tree structure, so I encourage everyone to actually produce it ☻

If you wish to "write in this thread", the closest equivalent would be to reply to the opening post, and delete the quotes. It probably makes sense to add a button for that.

On the other hand, don't hesitate to make new threads.

--Stefan

Unicode smileys FTW!