Real Time Updates of Latest Threads

[Sudharaka]

Hi Jameson, Chris and Ackbach (end everyone else too),

I was just wondering whether we could make our latest threads pane on the right hand side of the screen work like the Facebook post update mechanism. I had this idea for a long time but somehow didn't voice it. In essence all our webpages are static; you have to refresh the pages to see updates. It would be nicer if we have some Javascript and stuff integrated, so that it becomes more dynamic. If we can have that kind of real time updates (not just restricted to the Latest Threads pane but anywhere possible) it brings more life to the website and users will have the feeling that they are constant interacting with the website.

How do you feel about it? Is this a possible thing to implement in vb forums?

 

[Klaas van Aarsen]

One of the reasons I often have the Activity view open, is because it dynamically shows there's a new post and how many.
I kind of miss that in the other views (except the Who's online view).

 

[Chris L T521]

Hi Jameson, Chris and Ackbach (end everyone else too),

I was just wondering whether we could make our latest threads pane on the right hand side of the screen work like the Facebook post update mechanism. I had this idea for a long time but somehow didn't voice it. In essence all our webpages are static; you have to refresh the pages to see updates. It would be nicer if we have some Javascript and stuff integrated, so that it becomes more dynamic. If we can have that kind of real time updates (not just restricted to the Latest Threads pane but anywhere possible) it brings more life to the website and users will have the feeling that they are constant interacting with the website.

How do you feel about it? Is this a possible thing to implement in vb forums?

I'll see if a modification like this exists (I have a feeling it does, but I'll have to do some searching for one). I think it would be rather neat if the site was more dynamic.

EDIT #1: I found this mod, but it doesn't seem like we can fit it in the side bar (where the current latest threads mod is located). I'll continue looking for other possibilities.

 

[Jameson]

Eh, I'm not convinced that having a lot of moving things on the homepage is best. On one hand I see the point that having a sense of updates while you are just browsing the page can be nice to some people but since the activity stream updates automatically we can have more than one option for those who prefer this. This kind of mod would be AJAX based as well and I'm not sure how scaleable it would be for high traffic.

It's a good suggestion but I say let's talk about it before changing a major component of the homepage.