I suggest that you guys consider unlocking the “quick reply” box so you don’t have to click the quick reply button on a post to use it.
The reason vBulletin makes you click the reply button is to support the arcane “threaded” viewing mode they inexplicably still include in their software. For those of you who’ve been doing messageboards for a while, you’ll remember threaded mode layouts back from the days of those very simple “WWWBoards” that were everywhere for a while. Here’s a typically dreadful example.
The functionality is still there to support the old school mode, but they really botched the implementation (in my humble opinion). When you contribute to a thread, you’re supposed to click the quick reply box of the individual post you’re responding to. If you’re responding to the subject of the thread in general, you’re technically supposed to scroll back to the OP and click the quick reply button there. Of course, in reality just about everyone scrolls up and just clicks whatever random quick reply button they see at the end of the page, and goes from there. This makes the threaded mode pretty much useless, as responses are always filed after the last few posts in the thread.
I suggest disabling threaded mode and unlocking the quick reply box so you don’t have to click anything to start typing a response. This has the added advantage of saving posts in situations when we send in a quick reply only to be greeted by an error message. Currently, if I click “back” after that happens, my words are still in the reply box, but they’re locked away where I can’t get them, and when I click a quick reply button to unlock the field, they’re erased. It be frustrating if I ever posted anything of substance.
What it says in vB settings for “enable quick reply”:
We always err on the side of caution. And this is a threaded board.
“Quick Reply” is meant to be just that, something you dashed off in a hot second. If you have a measured, considered reply, click on “Reply” and use that box instead. Or “Go Advanced” after Quick Reply. Or put it in a text editor and then cut n’paste it over; a lot of people do that because they do not trust the hamsters not to eat what they write.
The way to save your post if something like that happens is to highlight and save the greyed-out post, then paste it into a new browser window open to that thread.
I believe the default setting is “Linear Mode,” which is indeed flat, but the software provides options to display threads in “Threaded Mode” or “Hybrid Mode” (click the “Display Modes” drop-down at the top of any thread). If I’m reading TubaDiva correctly, she’s saying they’ve opted to have the software preserve the proper “threaded” format. The board may display in Linear Mode by default, but the threaded replies are maintained in the database.
Yeah, but because the linear mode is the default - the threaded mode of most threads is a complete mess. Check out one of the American Idol threads in threaded mode - it’s pretty much incomprehensible.
I’d be curious to see if anyone still uses threaded mode these days.
I just tried it, hybrid mode was the most fun, all the posts are visible but the order is so screwed up
I did discover a use for the threaded mode, made it much easier to look for a post or find all the posts of a particular poster!
Yeeha, I got a new tool! Thanks Slacker
Could you make a “Quick Reply” button at the bottom of the page that quick replies to the OP? The icon in the heading bar would be ideal - I always click it first already. lol. That way you don’t need to change any settings but the resulting thread layout would probably be more like what people intended, in all display modes.
Odd… in Mozilla and Firefox, I’ve never gotten my own words stuck in a greyed-out box. Usually, they’re still there intact and live, and if they’re not, they’re not there at all.
I assumed the OP would have tried this before posting, but it was the first thing I checked, just to be sure. I use Firefox, and it didn’t work. I even tried ctl-a to select everything on the page, but still no dice. I was going to suggest “view source” without trying it, but I decided to be safe and check it first. Good thing I did.
I guess this might be in part because of habits such as mine, which is hit whichever ‘reply’ button is handy, and delete the quote provided if I’m not responding to that post in particular. Never occured to me that this would mess up threaded modes. And kind of makes the technical advice for vB settings moot.
Yours, mine, and most everyone else’s. Like I mentioned before, I think vBulletin dropped the ball on the implementation. There’s really no good way to allow both threaded and linear modes without making one or the other function poorly.
