bobatkins Posted March 15, 2003 Share Posted March 15, 2003 Anyone else seeing odd behavior when using the "New Answers" link in the forums. Previously it didn't seem to work very well, which was great beacuse I could use it to see which threads were generating a lot of interest. However recently - and especially this evening it seems to be working very efficiently and not showing me much at all. A few minutes ago it said there were no new answers at all, but when I went to the forum there were new threads present and when I clicked on them there were new answers - which the "New Answers" link had failed to show me. I've never been QUITE sure exactly what and how the New Answers link decided on what to show me, however I THINK I'm seeing new behavior. Anyone else share this view? Has the code for this feature been "tweaked" recently? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gordonr Posted March 16, 2003 Share Posted March 16, 2003 Something changed in your cookies! Sometimes posting to photo.net updates the parameter "your last visit, which we think was XXX", other times it doesn't. This question comes up periodically, and never seems to get a consistent answer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobatkins Posted March 16, 2003 Author Share Posted March 16, 2003 Yes, I assumed it was a cookies thing since the "last visit" time was very recent. However I post a lot and the cookies never seemed to get updated very often, though I'm getting the impression that that has changed. Maybe not, could just be me, but I have the feeling it has. Actually I prefer it the old way. I'd really rather see "New Answers over the last 24hrs" than "New Answers since your last visit", since that way I can keep up with which threads are most popular. Also, if it really is "New Answers since your last visit", then what if I didn't read the answers then, but I'd like to read them now! Maybe I can figure out which cookie it is and do something nasty to it... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chip l. Posted March 16, 2003 Share Posted March 16, 2003 If you are reffering to posts that seem to jump all over the place (in terms of the the numbers of posts since last visit) yes..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mottershead Posted March 16, 2003 Share Posted March 16, 2003 The New Answers has always been a little strange. It is based on the "second_to_last_visit" cookie that the software places on your browser. Basically, New Answers shows all the posts since your second_to_last_visit ended. The code is working correctly, but the behaviour is not very intuitive or what people actually expect. The reason I know this is that I have been working on last_visit and second_to_last_visit cookies in order to make the behaviour of New Answers a little more reasonable. (Also "Who's Online?", which is also controlled by the visit cookies.) Bob, the unusual behaviour you are seeing is probably because you are visiting the develoment server from time to time, and there is test code on there which is deliberaly timing out visits and sessions much faster than normal so that I don't have to wait forever for visits to time out and exercise the new code. Timing out sessions quickly is pretty harmless, but your "second_to_last_visit" cookie is probably getting set to the current time every time you go the development server. The development server and the real server use the same cookies. If you weren't visiting the development server, I don't think you would be seeing anything different. You, Rajeev, Patrick Hudepohl, and me are the only people who normally go the development server; so we are the only ones affected by this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ajax Posted March 16, 2003 Share Posted March 16, 2003 Well my "last visit" date sometimes seems to be reset, usually to "we think was 03/13/03 13:20:58" :) Checked my cookies settings and put photo.net in "always allow", I'll see what happens and report. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobatkins Posted March 16, 2003 Author Share Posted March 16, 2003 Brian - Thanks for the explanation. I have been busy on the development serever, so that probably explains things. I'm not sure what the ideal option would be. I guess if you visit once a week, then answers since your second_to_last visit is fine. However, if like me you visit maybe 5 or 6 times a day, then answers since the second_to_last visit makes it quite difficult to track which threads are popular (and that's one criterion I use when looking for threads which may deserve promotion from non-archived to archived). However my needs probably don't reflect the needs of the average user! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elliot_n Posted March 16, 2003 Share Posted March 16, 2003 Bob, surely the popular threads that you want to track are precisely those that have had answers since your last (or second-last) visit... The 'New Answers' feature has never worked properly for me. If I'm checking in 3 or 4 times a day, Photo.net still thinks that I last visited 2 days ago. And then it throws up threads that haven't had a contribution for over a week. It's a waste of bandwith and runs counter to the conventions of any other websites I've visited that have had a 'New Answers' feature. "New Answers since your last visit" should be fixed to show only those threads that really have had new answers. And The 'second-last-visit' cookie/feature should be dropped, and replaced with an option to display all threads with new answers in a user-specified time period (the last 4 hours, 2 day, 3 weeks etc...) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ajax Posted March 16, 2003 Share Posted March 16, 2003 Now it *does* know when I last visited. "New Answers History" would be a nice feature. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobatkins Posted March 16, 2003 Author Share Posted March 16, 2003 Elliot Well sometimes popular threads run their course. They may attract a bunch of answers within the first few hours, then not many, so if they are a day old when I check "New Answers" - and I've logged onto photo.net 5 times since the last response, they may not appear. As I said, this is probably of no concern to most users. There are a bunch of improvements that could be made to the feature, but there are probably also many other photo.net functions that need working on first and since Brian does it all, he has to assign priorities to these things. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mottershead Posted March 16, 2003 Share Posted March 16, 2003 Bob, one of the things that confuses people is that a visit only expires 24 hours from your last hit, more or less. As long as you visit the site once every 24 hours, and don't logout/re-login, your "last_visit" will continue indefinitely. When it finally does expire, on your next login you start a new visit. This means that the your previous "last_visit" value becomes the value of "second_to_last_visit", and you get a new "last_visit" value. Until I started playing with this, which caused my cookies to get reset, my "second_to_last_visit" was last year some time, which shows you that I spend way too much time on photo.net. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobatkins Posted March 16, 2003 Author Share Posted March 16, 2003 Now the fog is starting to clear! I presume my "second_to_last" visit cookie was also very old since there's rarely a 24hr period when I don't log in. If the development server was expiring cookies fast, I probably got reset to "a few minutes ago" at some point and I'm slowly building up the age of my cookie. Things are looking more normal now. At least now there's an explanation of how things are supposed to work here in the archives, so next time someone asks how this function works there will be an answer! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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