I don’t hate the concept of inline scrolling, but I do hate its implementation in many contexts. Discourse seems to have implemented theirs pretty well.
One of my biggest frustrations with the old board is that it could never remember where I had last left off reading. It would always dump me in some random part of the thread.
That never happens now. It always takes me straight to where I left off.
Now that you mention it, you’re right, definitely score one for the new board software.
For me, it depends which platform I’m using. Laptop, I tend to use the “new posts” list, but my phone just gives me the forum headings, so I use that.
I don’t have trouble keeping the forums straight, unlike when I used to use Tapa-Talk on my phone, where I got several “near-warnings” from the blessed Colibri for posts where I confused GQ with GD.
Discourse has no speed problems.
A computer having trouble loading this forum has its own problems.
Out of curiosity, what can you do in one of those forums that could get you a warning (or a near-warning) in the other? It’s not like responding to an IMHO thread while thinking you’re in the pit.
I’m confused about that as well. Particularly about whoever was saying they’d run into speed problems when they opened multiple tabs. I presume Discourse handles a second tab as if it’s just another user, so unless the server was already nearing it’s maximum capacity, I can’t see why opening up additional tabs would cause these issues.
If the issues were downstream of the server (computer, browser, ISP issues) that’s different. But I have to assume the server can handle multiple requests from the same user without a problem.
Other than Discourse’s ambiguous timestamps for older posts (how I wish it just read “3:14pm EST, August 3, 2019” or the like), I think the new system is a BIG improvement.
I like it a lot better, too. The only thing i miss is that on mobile you can’t see at a glance who started a thread. But the rest is great.
That reminds me. One feature, which seems like it should be really, really easy to implement but for some reason isn’t, is to give us a good way to know who the OP is.
Reddit and Imgur just add an OP in green(?) text next to their user name.
Another board I’m on adds a banner that says “OP” across their avatar.
Facebook will put “Thread Starter” next to their name (at least in some circumstances).
I’ve seen one or two boards that use a different color border or text box or title bar for the OP’s replies.
Something, anything would be helpful. Even adding it to the static header at the top of the page that shows the thread title and forum.
For example, at the top of this thread it could say “Just feeding back that virtually everything is awful (Stoid)” would be nice.
Oh, and as for a reason why infinite scroll is annoying, figuring out who started the thread is a great example. I started scrolling up, but that was going to take a while. Then I went to grab the slider, but it was behind the text box, so I had to shrink that, scroll up to the top, find the name, scroll back to where I was (optional, but I did it) and then re-enlarge the text box so I had space to type.
Pre-infinite scroll, right next to the text box was links for each page. I’d just right click on page one, open it in a new tab, see who started the thread and close it. Couldn’t have taken more then a second or two.
I also haven’t made up my mind about the pop up reply box. I understand why it could be better, but for me it seems like it’s in the way more often than it’s not. I’m constantly making it smaller so I can read or grab quotes and then making it larger so I can type or read what I wrote. It’s like when you’re growing out your hair and it’s long enough to be in your eyes/face all the time but not long enough to tuck behind your ears yet.
I’m still on one also.
And every time I want to quote somebody on vBulletin who posted more than two sentences it about drives me crazy, because I’m now used to being able to just highlight the part I want to answer, instead of having to quote the entire thing and then carefully delete paragraphs of stuff before and after.
Or I forget that there may be another page, or even more, of posts which followed the last one I’m looking at; and wind up composing a post about something that’s already been exhaustively dealt with.
I like infinite scroll. I like the automatically updating pages. I love how quoting works on Discourse. I’m not wild about the huge blank white spaces on my screen, but I’m used to that by now. I don’t like the preview as well as vBulletin’s because it doesn’t actually show just how the post will appear, but it works well enough that I can deal with it, and it is an advantage to not have to reload the page to see it. I’m sometimes thrown by the markup function, but it doesn’t happen that often; and Discobot’s mildly annoying, but I can click an x pretty fast.
I do miss the icon that showed whether I’d posted in a thread; but there are workarounds for that.
The browser history problem is indeed a problem.
Click on the date at the top of the post; it’ll show the number (more accurately than the one in the sidebar.) But admittedly that doesn’t work for just scrolling down the thread.
– I really would like an absolute instead of relative time/date in the “latest posts” list. The red line doesn’t show when I actually last checked that page,
That’s interesting, because I’ve got a really, really slow connection, and I’m not having that problem; and I usually have lots of tabs open. Are you using the app, or just going to the website? Maybe the app is the problem (I’m not using it)?
I never went by forum in vBulletin either, I just used ‘new posts’. I think that’s more a matter of individual preference than of the software.
I just hit the “home” key. Advantage of a desktop, maybe; but I need the large screen to comfortably read forums anyway.
I copy the part I want to quote then I have a macro that inserts the code for startquote and another that inserts the code for endquote. I’ve had those set up since way back when we used uBB and there were no buttons and we had to just know the codes if we wanted to format our text or quote somebody.
You like macros. I had to look them up. Macronutrients, which were the first hit, I know about. 
I didn’t know that was a thing. I just tried and while it worked, I immediately lost my place in the thread.
However, that gave me another idea. It would be nice if we could somehow mark individual posts. There’s times where I’m reading through a thread and I want to comment on something or I know I’m going to have to refer back to it and I end up not being able to find it again, at least not quickly.
The workaround I’ve always used is to quote those posts. Even if I have no intention ever posting the quote, it’s just a quick way to have the text in front of me while I’m typing something. It does cause the occasional screwed up post, but I usually catch that within the edit window.
In my experience it’s six of one, half a dozen of the other. Doing what you describe on vBulletin means instead of clicking the little quote button, you right click and copy to clipboard. Then when you reply to the post you delete the entire post, paste the clipboard and you’re done.
But I find a non-trivial amount of time I’m responding to a very short post just posted to a long thread and would like to quote the very short post in its entirety to clarify what I’m responding to. Discourse makes me carefully not select the final period lest it ‘helpfully’ strip away the quote entirely.
And I swear those icons showing you who the post is replying to never works when you’re replying to the post immediately preceding you.
EDIT: Reply to me, prove me wrong! Seriously, I want to see it work just to demonstrate it’s possible.
There is a bookmark feature and you can set for how long the bookmark lasts. With this you bookmark the specific post.
On the line with the reply button, it comes between the Edit Pencil and Delete trashcan icons. Looks like a banner as opposed to the flag before the pencil.
Reply icon check when not quoting.
ETA: See? There’s a blue J in the top right corner of What Exit?s post to show who he’s replying to. I replied to What Exit? but I don’t see his icon in the top right of mine.
But it doesn’t always happen.
I quoted your entire post added my text and replied. As expected (and unwanted) it removed the text. However, in that scenario it also removes the reply arrow thing.
I think it only happens when you hit the reply button without quoting anything.
Okay, let’s try with a partial quote.
EDIT: But the reply arrow isn’t shown on posts with an actual quote. Only when there is no quote.