Is it possible to highlight the posters’ name when using the “Search by user name” feature? I find having the keywords put in red in the keyword search very helpful, and was wondering if the same could be done to a user’s name/entire post within a thread. I know you can adjust the engine to show results as posts, but I was wondering if this could be done as well.
The highlight function only works on text within posts, not on the username field on the left.
You could highlight the username where mentioned in any post by adding “&highlight=<member name>” to the end of the thread url.
e.g.:
Searching for your username gives me this thread:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=195706
If I want to highlight your name in any of the posts, I can add &highlight=Orange+Skinner at the end of the above url, giving me:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=195706&highlight=Orange+Skinner
Alternately, if you want to locate a post from a specific poster within a given thread, you could use your browser’s “search on this page function” and enter the member name in the search field. For Internet Explorer this is at Edit/Find.
To search through a thread that is multiple pages long you could use the “Show printable version” link and then do a “search on this page”.
Here’s another neat feature:
If you’re only tracking whether a specific poster has replied to a thread, just click on the number in the “Replies” column on the index page. This will tell you whether that specific poster has posted [again] to the thread.
Thanks, xash.