RFC Live View

[Scotster]

It is entirely possible to implement this without using tons of resources. When a user performs an action (such as writing a post), a static RSS file is updated. The same data is shown to everyone, and there is an AJAX request every 3 seconds (configurable, for shared hosting). That wouldn't use much resources at all.

I'm actually +1 for this, and could see myself using it.

The only problem with static files is permissions. If the user is not going to be authenticated in any way, it can only store public information. Some boards choose to require logging in to view posts and content, and I believe at least that would need to be supported (posts requiring moderation privileges may be alright to ignore however).

I'm not sure if this is along the right lines but the previous forum that I am a member of only allows members to see the page. This is the reason why I couldn't show you guys the actual page that I was referring to.

Would that make it easier with regards to authentication? Page not accessible by non members?

[imkingdavid]

Well, if I'm understanding it properly, it's a bit more complicated than that. You have authentication (is the user logged in?), and then you have authorization (does the user have permission to view X content). The two are not mutually exclusive, because unauthenticated users are not necessarily unauthorized, and authenticated users are not necessarily authorized.

Whatever the case, this page should be restricted by permissions. If I am a logged in user with access to forums A and B but not forum C, I should only see activity from the first two. But a user with access to forum C should see that content (this is the authorization issue). Board admins should be able to allow guests to view the page if they want to (this is the authentication issue) but in whatever case, only information they would already be able to see by otherwise browsing the forum should be displayed.

So this is why a static text file is not really a good option.

Is there any reason we can't just use the feed.php file? Doesn't it generate an ATOM feed that could be used to provide the content? Or would that use up too many resources? From what I can tell, what we would need to do is send a request to the feed.php script and fetch, for instance, the most recent X posts/topics/actions. Store the ID of the most recent in a variable and periodically (e.g. every N seconds) ping the feed.php page, disregard anything including and before the content with the given ID, use jQuery to add new divs for each new action, and store the newest ID. Rinse, repeat. At least, it works in my head.

With all of that in mind, I'm not sure we really need to be spending so much time discussing this if we aren't planning on this being a core feature.

[bantu]

In my opinion this topic is not sufficient for an RFC. Please describe the feature precisely instead of just saying "copy feature X from software Y".

[Scotster]

So much for a picture is worth a 1000 words, ok here goes.....

A seperate page where the user can view the live updates of the forum.

Each time a new action is taken on the forum, ie new user, new post, edit, etc, etc, etc, the live page is updated to show a brief description of the action.

Advantages are that users can view this live view, should they wish, and not need to constantly update "new posts" to see what's new on the forum. Also advantatgeous from a moderation standpoint as a full overview of what's going on in the forum can be seen.

Disadvantages are that it may be a high resource drain, I would be surprised if that was the case but I don't know enough about how this sort of thing effects performance. As mentioned Atom is already in place which could be used. Due to using the Atom interface I'm not sure if new users and post edits would be included or not, would need either added.. or just dismissed.


Suggested features:

Able to select Subscribed Threads only for udates/viewing
Permissions in place so that you can view all postings from all areas your profile/membership allows
Filters to select just new posts, rather than all the new user/edited posts info (if these are in place)


Having all the features would be nice, but clearly edited posts and new users joining isn't the main point of this suggestion. The main feature is that new posts and replies are shown "live" from the one page with no user input required.

[Pony99CA]

Another way of thinking of it is similar to notifications, except they're on a public page and every change that you can view gets posted there (with some context, like the first line or two of posts).

IMHO, it's UI sugar, but not particularly useful. On a very slow board, there wouldn't be much to see; on a very busy board, things might scroll by too quickly.

Steve