...more recent posts
I've changed the new activity monitor on the site. It is simpler now, and I think more usable. Of course it assumes that you either have a permanent connection or stay dialed in for long periods of time. I took out all the javascript, so now going to /monitor just turns the browser window black (the present window, not a pop up.) Resize or not as you wish. It will reload (once a minute now, but the black page is only .5K so it's not very much bandwidth really) until there is something new at which point it will just load up the front page which will indicate where the new post is. Also I realized I could have it print out the people who are currently monitoring, so I'm having it do that. Not sure if I'll keep that in or not. Could be sort of interesting.
If there is anybody from the outside listening in, the deal here is that if you have an account, then the front page of this site is configurable. You can add or remove any pages that exist anywhere on the site to or from your front page. Also you can tell the system to keep track of new (to you) posts and/or new (to you) comments for each page. Then every time you load up the front page it lists the pages you follow, and next to that the number of new posts, and then the number of new comments. Clicking on the page brings you to the page the same way a guest sees it, but clicking on [x new posts] brings up the page with only the new content. Clicking on [x new comments] brings you directly to a page containing new comments. The activity monitor is simply a blank black page that reloads itself every minute sending an id cookie to the server, and the server looks in the database to see if there is anything new for that user.
It's been our experience that this simple system greatly enhances the usefulness of the site. The most important result has been that old threads (even very old threads) which receive new comments are immediately called to everyone's attention. So while all the pages are chronological, in standard weblog style, we don't have the negative side effect where old discussions are less important simply because they are buried somewhere in your archives. If someone comments on something I wrote long in the past it is immediately brought to my attention.