NI Developer Exchange Wishlist addition.

[tst]

Obviously you're not the only one who thinks some of the contributors are Gs (That's my name for it). Even excluding experienced and knowledegable top contributors, you still have people who are definitely Gs (Dennis, Rolf, Greg, since you say he'll be back, Aaron and some others). The only question is, how would a G be decided? I have never taken a NI course, never really delved into optimization and never used things like IMAQ or DAQ, but I contribute a lot and I have used FP and PDA to an extent, which most people haven't. Does that make me a G? (answer: no.) Do I mind? Not really. Will other people think I'm a G? Possibly. Will I ever be a G? Hopefully. Will I manage to keep this series of questions much longer? Doubtfully. Hope to god I'm talking metaphorically (Edwin Collins).
Anyway, I like the basic idea.
2 more requests for Molly: Is it possible to have links to all the threads I've posted to and which have new posts in them at the top of the main page of the forums? I don't like recieving countless emails, but when I log in I would like to have an easy way to know that someone has posted in a thread I previously posted to.
Is it possible to add a User\s field to the search? Often someone will remember a post by a specific user and would want to search only for posts by that user. I'm sure Ben would love this.

[tst]

Addition to my request - I see that when you click on the number where it says how many new messages there are, you're supposed to get to the first unread message, which is inconvenient but fine, except for the fact that in long threads it doesn't appear to work - you get somewhere else. This also seems to happen when you click on a link for a specific post by someone - quite often you get to a different page of the thread.

[RayFarmer]

Yeah, I have noticed that.

[tst]

Yet another problem:
On occasion, when I try to post a post with an attachment, the browser takes its time, and then, instead of posting the message, it opens up the "Reply to message" page again, only now it's empty and the message wasn't posted. Doesn't matter how many times I retry, it doesn't work. The only solution is to post the message without the attachment and then edit the message and add the attachment.
On a brighter note, it seems that Molly's suggestion for regaining posts lost in the sea of ethernet works - if you posted a message and the browser "timed out", go two pages back and one forward, and your text will magically reappear, even if you forgot to copy it. I wouldn't count on this, but as an emergency measure it's good.

[Ben]

Another note re E-system.

Imagine the number of new and old contributors we could pick-up on hte Exchange once the word got out that E status was possible by way of the Exchange.

Ben

[Ray.R]

would we be seeing people such as "guru"?
🙂

[Molly K]

tst -

"On occasion, when I try to post a post with an attachment, the browser takes its time, and then, instead of posting the message, it opens up the "Reply to message" page again, only now it's empty and the message wasn't posted. Doesn't matter how many times I retry, it doesn't work. The only solution is to post the message without the attachment and then edit the message and add the attachment."

I think this has to do with the size of the file you are trying to attach. One of the AEs ran into the problem here yesterday and we zipped up the file and it worked. I agree that it should give you an error message rather than just reload an empty page. I will add this to the list for the forum developers and try to find out what the file size limit is. (I thought it was 10MB, but the AE was trying to attach a 6MB file.)

I'm glad you were able to validate the back and forth steps to get your post text back. This one is going to the developers also. In the meantime, I will see if I can add text to the error page that gives the temporary workaround.

Thanks!

[tst]

Welcome back, Molly.

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I'm glad you were able to validate the back and forth steps to get your post text back.

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Actually, I got over confident earlier and forgot to ctrl-c, and I lost a post. A fairly long one. So, like I said, I wouldn't trust this to work every time.

Do you have any comment on the other requests?

[Molly K]

tst -

"Is it possible to have links to all the threads I've posted to and which have new posts in them at the top of the main page of the forums? I don't like receiving countless emails, but when I log in I would like to have an easy way to know that someone has posted in a thread I previously posted to."

Personally, I have configured my subscriptions to send me one email per day that includes the message subject and body (on the Subscriptions tab in your profile). This way, I can read all the new posts by scanning one email. It doesn't actually solve your problem though. What I would recommend for you would be to continue to subscribe to the messages, but set your notification frequency to daily or weekly to cut back on the number of emails you get. Then, when you come to the community, click on Dashboard >> Manage Subscriptions and you have a list of all the threads you have been involved in and you can scan to see which ones have new activity. Alternative options would be to float the messages to the top of the boards so you have quick access to them or add them to your bookmark list so you can keep track of them there as well. I hope some of that helps you find what you are looking for.

"Is it possible to add a User's field to the search?"
The Advanced Message search in the forums allows you to filter results by the person who posted the message. This will return results for each individual message, and I think you are one who prefers the search in the header of the page that returns one result per thread. We don't have a user filter on that search yet, but I will add it to the desired requirements when we start looking at how to improve the search situation.

Thanks!

[Molly K]

tst -

I like this concept of the "Next New Post." There is an option in your profile that is supposed to jump you down to the new message in the thread, but I have seen that it gets confused sometimes when there are multiple pages in the thread. This "Next New Post" seems feasible since all the messages are sequenced within the board. When you are on a particular message in a board and you want to see the next message posted to that board, you just need to add 1 to the message ID in the URL. I will suggest this feature to the developers and keep you posted.

Does someone think this is something that could be built with a little toolbar similar to Ed's search toolbar?
This would be an example of the URL of the page you were on:
http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/message?board.id=130&message.id=854#M854
And this would be the URL you would want to hit next:
http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/message?board.id=130&message.id=855#M855
I'm not toolbar savvy, but maybe someone out there is 🙂

The only thing a little odd about this is that you will jump between all the threads in the board, but I guess that's the point, right?

Thanks!