I just searched for something in the property discussion.  I wanted to link a friend to one of deadalnix's posts, so I put "I'm so happy to read this !!!!" into the search box and punched it.

What it brought up was one of David Nadlinger's posts.  I want to say nothing bad about David Nadlinger's fine post; it just wasn't what I was searching for.  Now, deadalnix's post was on the page, so it wasn't a complete miss, but I expected it to be the first one and it wasn't.  If I sent that link to my friend then he would probably read the wrong part.

There's more frustration in this though: partially because the result was unthreaded.  It's unthreaded, so I can't just click on the post I /actually/ want and get a new URL in my browser that I can copy-pasta. When I click on "View this thread in threaded view mode" it DOES NOT go to deadalnix's post as my search initially intended: it still selects David's post.  Now I have to scan through all of the 7625342 subtopics in the property discussion /by hand/ and find the one I'm interested in.  I eventually found it and sent the link.  Very time consuming. Thankfully it is fast.

Please fix?

I'm sorry if this is already a known bug or something.  I don't actually remember what the forum front-end is called or where I would go to properly find/add issues about it.

On Sunday, 27 January 2013 at 20:25:30 UTC, Chad J wrote:
> I just searched for something in the property discussion.  I wanted to link a friend to one of deadalnix's posts, so I put "I'm so happy to read this !!!!" into the search box and punched it.
>
> What it brought up was one of David Nadlinger's posts.  I want to say nothing bad about David Nadlinger's fine post; it just wasn't what I was searching for.  Now, deadalnix's post was on the page, so it wasn't a complete miss, but I expected it to be the first one and it wasn't.  If I sent that link to my friend then he would probably read the wrong part.

Here is what comes up for me as the second result (first result is your post):
http://forum.dlang.org/post/uagknsecziepoedcabvr@forum.dlang.org

This is the canonical link for deadalnix's post. If your view mode is set to "basic" (default setting), it will redirect to this address:

http://forum.dlang.org/thread/kdqrnl$13ft$1@digitalmars.com?page=3#post-uagknsecziepoedcabvr:40forum.dlang.org

Note that the address contains the ID of the thread, the page number within the thread, and an anchor (hash fragment) which indicates the exact post on the page.

I conclude that either of the following must be true:

1. You are seeing a search result different from what I'm seeing;

2. For some reason, your web browser is ignoring anchors in URLs (when handling redirects, or in general).

> There's more frustration in this though: partially because the result was unthreaded.  It's unthreaded, so I can't just click on the post I /actually/ want and get a new URL in my browser that I can copy-pasta.

I don't see what prevents you from doing exactly the above, unless your web browser is removing the anchor part of the URL. The link would be longer than necessary, and would force the threaded-view mode, but it would still link to the respective post.

> When I click on "View this thread in threaded view mode" it DOES NOT go to deadalnix's post as my search initially intended: it still selects David's post.

The URL hash fragment, which contains the ID of the specific post that got you on that thread page, is not sent to the server. However, you'd only see that notice if you either scrolled up, or your web browser is ignoring anchors in redirects. The notice applies to links without an anchor.

> Now I have to scan through all of the 7625342 subtopics in the property discussion /by hand/ and find the one I'm interested in.

Alternatively, you could right-click the post title to obtain a canonical link to the post, which should work with all view modes (unless you are using some kind of web browser which ignores anchors in redirects).

It is documented here:

http://forum.dlang.org/help#canonical

(If you are using a web browser which does not understand anchors in links, please scroll down to the section "Canonical links".)

> Please fix?

Specific suggestions on improving the software are welcome.

On Sunday, 27 January 2013 at 20:25:30 UTC, Chad J wrote:
> I'm sorry if this is already a known bug or something.  I don't actually remember what the forum front-end is called or where I would go to properly find/add issues about it.

The source code is here:

https://github.com/CyberShadow/DFeed

Issues can be reported on GitHub as well.

This information is also available via the "Help" link in the top-right corner, as well as the "About this forum" link in the page footer.

On 01/27/2013 06:50 PM, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
> On Sunday, 27 January 2013 at 20:25:30 UTC, Chad J wrote:
>> I just searched for something in the property discussion. I wanted to
>> link a friend to one of deadalnix's posts, so I put "I'm so happy to
>> read this !!!!" into the search box and punched it.
>>
>> What it brought up was one of David Nadlinger's posts. I want to say
>> nothing bad about David Nadlinger's fine post; it just wasn't what I
>> was searching for. Now, deadalnix's post was on the page, so it wasn't
>> a complete miss, but I expected it to be the first one and it wasn't.
>> If I sent that link to my friend then he would probably read the wrong
>> part.
>
> Here is what comes up for me as the second result (first result is your
> post):
> http://forum.dlang.org/post/uagknsecziepoedcabvr@forum.dlang.org
>
> This is the canonical link for deadalnix's post. If your view mode is
> set to "basic" (default setting), it will redirect to this address:
>
> http://forum.dlang.org/thread/kdqrnl$13ft$1@digitalmars.com?page=3#post-uagknsecziepoedcabvr:40forum.dlang.org
>
>
> Note that the address contains the ID of the thread, the page number
> within the thread, and an anchor (hash fragment) which indicates the
> exact post on the page.
>
> I conclude that either of the following must be true:
>
> 1. You are seeing a search result different from what I'm seeing;
>
> 2. For some reason, your web browser is ignoring anchors in URLs (when
> handling redirects, or in general).
>
>> There's more frustration in this though: partially because the result
>> was unthreaded. It's unthreaded, so I can't just click on the post I
>> /actually/ want and get a new URL in my browser that I can copy-pasta.
>
> I don't see what prevents you from doing exactly the above, unless your
> web browser is removing the anchor part of the URL. The link would be
> longer than necessary, and would force the threaded-view mode, but it
> would still link to the respective post.
>
>> When I click on "View this thread in threaded view mode" it DOES NOT
>> go to deadalnix's post as my search initially intended: it still
>> selects David's post.
>
> The URL hash fragment, which contains the ID of the specific post that
> got you on that thread page, is not sent to the server. However, you'd
> only see that notice if you either scrolled up, or your web browser is
> ignoring anchors in redirects. The notice applies to links without an
> anchor.
>
>> Now I have to scan through all of the 7625342 subtopics in the
>> property discussion /by hand/ and find the one I'm interested in.
>
> Alternatively, you could right-click the post title to obtain a
> canonical link to the post, which should work with all view modes
> (unless you are using some kind of web browser which ignores anchors in
> redirects).
>
> It is documented here:
>
> http://forum.dlang.org/help#canonical
>
> (If you are using a web browser which does not understand anchors in
> links, please scroll down to the section "Canonical links".)
>
>> Please fix?
>
> Specific suggestions on improving the software are welcome.

Hey, thank you.

You are somehow arriving at different URLs than mine.  I'm starting to suspect that dlang's (search engine)/(google invocation) is causing this, because it looks like the forum interface has all the necessary capabilities.

When I open your links I end up exactly where I want to be in either threaded or unthreaded mode.

I should be more specific.  I'll include links this time.

My query starts here:
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22+I%27m+so+happy+to+read+this+!!!!+%22&submit.x=0&submit.y=0&domains=dlang.org&sourceid=google-search&sitesearch=forum.dlang.org

It gives me one result.  I click it.  Awaaaaay...
http://forum.dlang.org/thread/kdqrnl$13ft$1@digitalmars.com?page=3

That one wasn't what I wanted.  So I switch to threaded:
http://forum.dlang.org/post/dozuyhtyzqgmluyplmyd@forum.dlang.org

After lots of scanning, I arrive at my desired destination:
http://forum.dlang.org/post/uagknsecziepoedcabvr@forum.dlang.org

-------

I tried a different experiment, starting with your links.

First I start at the unthreaded link you gave:
http://forum.dlang.org/thread/kdqrnl$13ft$1@digitalmars.com?page=3#post-uagknsecziepoedcabvr:40forum.dlang.org

Then I click "View mode: threaded" at the top.  I end up here:
http://forum.dlang.org/post/dozuyhtyzqgmluyplmyd@forum.dlang.org

The above is not where I hoped I'd end up: usually when I do that it's because I want to take the post I was anchored on and introduce the context it appeared in.

...

There /is/ something that I think the forum interface could do to help in situations like these:

If viewing in basic mode, every post should have a "view this post in threaded mode" type of link.

I suppose it would also work if the "View mode: threaded" link would be generated in such a way as to include the post's ID/hash/whatever in an anchor/hash fragment in the target URL.

The former would be more useful in general because it allows me to find context for specific posts of my choosing, and not just ones that my point of origination was merciful enough to anchor me at.  The latter would not save me from dlang/google's search giving me an unanchored link.  I do, at some level, intuitively expect the latter to work.

HtH

On 01/27/2013 06:50 PM, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
>
> Alternatively, you could right-click the post title to obtain a
> canonical link to the post, which should work with all view modes
> (unless you are using some kind of web browser which ignores anchors in
> redirects).
>
> It is documented here:
>
> http://forum.dlang.org/help#canonical
>
> (If you are using a web browser which does not understand anchors in
> links, please scroll down to the section "Canonical links".)
>

I didn't understand this at first because I tried to do it from the search results that google gave me and Murphy's hand was covering the documentation link in your post when I read it ;)

I understand what that is now.

In fact, there's an (undocumented?) feature that allows me to do what I want: if I left-click on a post's title, it will bump my browser to the "canonical" link, which will show it in thread context if threaded view is my current setting.

That's good for me, personally, but I wonder if it would still be a good idea to have a "view this post in threaded mode" option tucked away somewhere just to be very explicit that it is possible to do that.  I didn't actually expect clicking on post title to do that.

Also, there's another problem I still see that the "view post in threaded mode" link would solve:
If I'm in basic mode and I want to view a post in thread context, then I have no way to do this in one click, it seems.  If I click "View mode: threaded" then I will lose the post and it will select for display whatever post happened to be at the top of the page in basic mode.  If I click on the post title, it will do nothing because I'm already at that post and already in the same mode, which is basic.  Instead I have to save the URL, click threaded mode, go back to the original URL now that I'm in threaded mode, then click a post title, and I can get a thread context, and that operation was side-effectful because I'm in threaded mode now.

If you read all this and take it into consideration, I'll be quite thankful.

I'm starting to feel like my reluctance to use the otherwise really good forum interface might stem from a single wart or misunderstood UI element like this.

On Monday, 28 January 2013 at 03:18:26 UTC, Chad Joan wrote:
> There /is/ something that I think the forum interface could do to help in situations like these:
>
> If viewing in basic mode, every post should have a "view this post in threaded mode" type of link.

Thanks. I've changed the yellow notice text to point out that clicking a post's title does this.

> I suppose it would also work if the "View mode: threaded" link would be generated in such a way as to include the post's ID/hash/whatever in an anchor/hash fragment in the target URL.

Thanks, I'll think about this. (It's not trivial because currently the information is not included in the HTTP request.)