[RedWing9]

Oooh. I didn't know that I was gaining privy knowledge about FreeRepublic v3.0! What an honor :o)

If GWB is right and there will be a user level option for how many posts to allow per page, that would be fantastic. The benefits of breaking a thread into parts, to those with 56k and less, and also to the web server cache would be great. There are many of us though that have high-speed access and 100, 200, or even 500 posts isn't a bother.

I also looked more closely at your example and noticed that there was an "old style" link, that's kinda cool. That would be beneficial to those who have the "fear of change" bug. But I would further suggest that you throw that in at the user level too as it would get kinda annoying to have to click that on every thread you read if you are one of those users. Especially if you have 100 posts set as a preference, on a 56k connection, and have to wait to see that link to download "again" the thread.

If I may be so bold as to offer one more suggestion. Something I think I've mentioned in a "wish list" thread before. And since you've already made changes to the post form, I think its prudent now. Could you please put the post the user is replying to on the bottom of the post page? This makes it much easier to get your point across. The current software does a great job of allowing you to go back without losing what you typed, and I realize the user could always open the reply in a new window. But consider it like a "one-stop shopping" environment.

Thanks.

[John Robinson]

I'm worried about bandwidth usage. By example, all of the very busy forums limit the number of posts per page to some low number. Yahoo: 1, Delphi: 10-20, UBB: 20. The only popular site I know that doesn't limit the number of posts is Slashdot, but they use a true threaded format which hides the bulk of the posts.

I agree with you, the new threads do look like barf w/o some type of formatting. I'll probably make non-style sheet views similar to this:

.fr_title
{
    font: bold 10pt Arial;
}

.fr_header, .fr_choices, .fr_page
{
    font: bold 8pt Arial;
}

.fr_header
{
    padding: 3px 6px;
}

.fr_normal .fr_header
{
    background-color: #ddddee;
}

.fr_removed .fr_header
{
    background-color: #eedddd;
}

.fr_body
{
    margin: 0em 1em;
}

.fr_default
{
    display: none;
}

.fr_menu
{
    margin-bottom: 1em;
}

.fr_page_goto
{
    color: black;
}

.fr_page_here
{
    text-decoration: none;
    color: red;
}