[Rui]

Hi,

When threads have more than a given number of posts (6, I think), in the tree you have to click this "More replies below current depth..." to be able to see the next posts. Then if you can't still see them all, you have another "More replies below current depth..." to click, and so on.
I find this a bit annoying. Does someone know if there's some way to define the number of posts displayed in the tree?
Cheers

[pete]

The number of posts to display in the thread display is a setting in the forum software and I don't think that it can be set individually by each user. I agree with you that this can be a bit irritating when you want to browse through a long thread. The default thread depth is 5, which is a bit low. Would you like us to try to increase this? What thread depth would you suggest instead of 5?

[Rui]

Hi Pete,

I think the ideal was if the number of posts in the thread display was unlimited . But it seems that the thread display box is always the same size, regardless of having 2 or 5 posts. Is this right?
I'm looking at it now, it has 2 posts, and there is a blank space (for the next 3 posts, I guess) below the 2nd post.
However, when you click the "More replies below current depth...", its size increase.

So, if it is possible to have a thread display window size function of the number of posts it contains, I would switch the thread depth to something like 25, or 50 . However, if the thread display window size has to have the size corresponding to the maximum possible number of posts, obviously even 25 would be too big ... so may be 10, or keep 5

But maybe something interesting would be to invert the order of the posts. Currently, the oldest post are on top and the newest on bottom.
This way, even in a thread with 100 posts, if I wanted to read only the 2 last ones (imagine I had read already the other 98), I wouldn't have to scroll down . And it would be coherent with the forums displays (newest threads are on top).
What do you think?

[pete]

I think that the height of the thread list is fixed and I don't know of a simple way to make it variable and dependent on the actual thread depth. With a long thread you will get scroll bars in the thread list though. I tested this a bit with longer threads and it seems to work quite well. To test it I have now increased the thread depth to show by default 25 posts. That will make more than 90% of all threads fully visible in the thread list under threaded mode. Please let me know what you think about this new setting.

About inverting the list. This is not possible without hacking the code I think. However, if you are mainly interested in finding the latest posts you can use linear mode with the newest messages first. You can have this as default in linear mode. The big benefit of threaded mode is that it gives you a feeling for the development of the discussions and how a thread divides into different topics as the discussion goes on. To see this logic you need the first messages first in the tree I think.

Anyway, let me know what you think about having 25 instead of 5 as the default thread depth to show in threaded mode.

[Rui]

I think it's much better now

I also prefer the Threaded or the Hybrid mode, for the same reason you mentioned.
And perhaps the idea of inverting the order wouldn't make much sense in the Threaded display

[pete]

Glad you like it. We'll see if someone else complains about this new setting. I also was a bit frustrated with always having to click on that "show more" link in the thread list. Please let me know if you want me to further increase the limit depth so that this message never occurs. I am hesitant about what is the best max depth value.

[Rui]

As you said, very few threads go beyond 25 posts ... so, in my opinion, 25 seems to be fine.