Forum: Link to last post in 'Last post' column

This is a tricky situation, as it falls into the same problems as #new links don't work across multiple pages. We probably don't want to propagate that bug into a second interface area.

This looks like a great usability improvement!

But IMO this code is kind of weird....

+function _forum_format($topic, $show_title = FALSE) {
   if ($topic && !empty($topic->timestamp)) {
-    return t('@time ago<br />by !author', array('@time' => format_interval(time() - $topic->timestamp), '!author' => theme('username', $topic)));
+    if (!$show_title) {
+      return t('@time ago<br />by !author', array('@time' => format_interval(time() - $topic->timestamp), '!author' => theme('username', $topic)));
+    }
+    else {
+      return t('!title<br />@time ago<br />by !author', array('!title' => l(truncate_utf8($topic->node_title, 25, TRUE, TRUE), "node/$topic->nid"),'@time' => format_interval(time() - $topic->timestamp), '!author' => theme('username', $topic)));
+    }

What you're doing is passing in display parameters (and hard-coding HTML) in an API function. What I would recommend doing instead is changing this to a theme function, with core only providing the "show_title" way, and if people want to override that, they can do so in their themes.

Also, +1 to linking to #new. I know #new has problems on pagers, but when that bug finally gets sorted out, we can just fix it in both places, imo. Linking to the node without jumping to the new comment on the 90%+ forum posts that *don't* have multiple pages is a usability detriment, because people might not realize there are new replies unless they're observing closely.

Also, why n.title AS node_title ? title is fine. It's more consistent with how this is called elsewhere, and $thread->title is descriptive enough.

I think this needs another reroll.

So 6162 is fixed, which surely means a re-roll here.
What's the chances of this making it in as a usability improvement in D6? I guess slim, but won't up to 7.x just yet.

I don't see any reason to bump to 7.x. This breaks no APIs, and it a usability enhancement.

Can anyone provide a simple patch for the latest 5.x version?

Nevermind, patched it myself.

Moving feature requests to the D7 queue.

Marking #9844: Display name of active thread in forum overview as duplicate of this.

@denny (or anyone, really) how exactly were you able to apply this patch to 5.x? 5.x seems to be rejecting everything for me when I try to apply?

This is my modification of the patched template file;- a little less? complex, and easier to theme.

This still doesn't deal with the pagin issue (per node/6162). - also this is now in advanced_forum (although there's performance issues with the current implementation) http://drupal.org/node/268273

What do you think of phpbb style?

re: #28: The performance issues have now been taken care of. Still might be worth getting this into core, though, as I override a big chunk of core to get it working.

Michelle

Gurpartap - did you cvs up?

When trying to apply, hunk 2 failed to apply. attached is the reject file.

tested and it all works, however it is confusing as it does not link to the latest post - just the node with the latest comment. Is this the desired behaviour?

I would have thought it best to jump to the last comment of the node? (maybe the performance cost is too high?)

Instead of comment_num_new() could do SELECT MAX(cid) then link to the comment/$cid#comment-$cid URLs, shouldn't be any different in terms of performance.

This patch should not use truncate_utf8(), especially not with the word-splitting set to TRUE. This will not work for CJK languages. See
http://drupal.org/node/269911#comment-2795478
and #200185: truncate_utf8() is used as a substring function

Related issue on truncate_utf8():
#768040: truncate_utf8() only works for latin languages (and drupal_substr has a bug)

The comments in #43 are wrong now -- truncate_utf8() is being fixed up so it can be used for any character set in #768040: truncate_utf8() only works for latin languages (and drupal_substr has a bug).

Instead of comment_num_new() could do SELECT MAX(cid) then link to the comment/$cid#comment-$cid URLs, shouldn't be any different in terms of performance.

it is easy way to implement it in phpbb style

this patch is not working on latest drupal 7 build. blank page error at topic-list view.
fix please.

#39: d7-forum-last-post.patch queued for re-testing.

Hi, any updates on the useability of this patch? Seems to be a much requested feature