When trying to find an older post in a large thread, I’d sometimes just use the text find function in my browser (Firefox), vs. the board search (usually the former would turn out to be quicker, and also not risk a X second timeout before I can do another one).
Well, just tried that in a thread that I know I had posted in 2 weeks ago, and it couldn’t find either the keyword (from my post) or my handle, until I scrolled back up manually using the slider thingy. I guess older posts are technically there in the thread, but aren’t loaded into memory by default.
Here’s the right/best way. At least on a PC; I don’t know about tablets & phones.
Open the thread in question. Click the magnifying glass search icon at upper right to expand the search pop-out. Check the box that says “Search this topic”. Do that step first, then enter your search term(s) and/or @somebody to search for posts made by the user somebody. Then wait a few seconds without pressing [Enter]. All the relevant posts will appear in a popout that appears below the search input box.
Then you can click any of those to scroll the current page / browser tab to that post. Or even use Ctrl-click to open the thread to that post in a new browser tab, or Shift-click to open the thread to that post in a new browser window.
After you fill in your search terms, if you mistakenly hit [Enter], you’ll be taken to a search results page with the same results. But from there it’s harder to get back to the thread to refine your search. So I prefer to wait for the pop-out results.
I can now search for segments of strings, whereas before I don’t think it was possible — or at least it was not successful. E.g., search this thread for ‘lgu’, a segment in the string ‘LSLGuy’, and it finds it.
Discourse is VASTLY superior to vBulletin in so many ways.
But like all modern phone-style apps, it’s kinda inscrutable. Lots of things that don’t look like buttons are buttons and lotsa things have hovers that you won’t know exist until you happen to linger your mouse there and something pops up. The owner’s manual must be huge. If only it existed.
Good to know, and I’m finding that to be true. For instance I tested searching a string segment in a very long thread, and it found all instances! Or what I believe to be all of them, anyway. Earlier, I only tested this thread, which of course is very short.