Quote by Blaine: This appears to be a preference depending on user. I added a icon to the topic header so that once you have read the last post you could easily see the complete thread.
Does that help or even still it's not what you would prefer?
I can make this a site configureable option but there are really many ways to program this block. Show posts, view last reply, last poster etc... I've got all variatiions and maybe I will offer these as extra later.
Oh, ok. I guess I would argue that I would never want to see only the last post via the center block, because I have no good way of knowing whether or not I missed a post or two since I last viewed the thread short of remembering how many posts are in each thread.
The ideal, I think, would be to have the link take you to the last
page of the thread.
I agree that it would be very nice if the centerblock was more easily customizable on a per site/per user basis. On my site, I hacked it to show who was the last to post in the thread, because I felt it was important. I've been wanting to add a way to make the centerblock link to the last page of the post, but I haven't figured out a good way to do that, yet.
Random request: Is it possible to add an &page=last option to the urls for posts so that we can hardcode in an easy way to go to the last page?
Also, I have some comments/suggestions about the interface (I'm a big interface guy ). Currently, I don't find the interface to be very intuitive (at least here, with this theme). When looking at it, the function of the icon that takes you to the entire thread is not obvoius. Maybe it would be better to change the title so that it looks like this (using this thread as an example):
Extensions / Plugins / Forum upgrade Version 2.3
Thus, if you were looking at only a single post, you could click the thread title to go to the first page of the entire thread. This would also allow you to remove the Subject line above the Author Posts table, which feels cluttered.
I think you should dump the main Forum menubar (the one in dark gray, above). For one, I don't feel like Login and New Topic belong there. Login is more of a site function, not a forum function. And heck, it's in the sidebar, already. Also, New Topic isn't a forum-specific function like Home and Popular. I think it should be farther below, where it would feel more like a part of the current forum than the entire Forum portion of the website. The Popular, Home, and Members links are great, but they could be taken out of the menu and made less invasive as simple, small text links near the search bar, along with Show All New Posts and the like.
Also, the bar with the current location and the left/right arrows feels cluttered. I am a huge fan of the Smooth Blue interface from 2.2 RC1. That is a really nice, really intuitive, beautiful interface.
So, just my 2 cents. I've been considering donating for a while, now, but I am still waiting for the interface and centerblock to feel a little more clean. You've been doing a terrific job, though. Thanks for all you have given to the geeklog community.
- Tulkas