Ordering the Forum Jump

Yoda

On the Forum jump popup menu, and elsewhere on the boards, it seems that the forums are sorted by some arbitrary factor like the forumid. While that number may be useful for many purposes, it isn't very convenient. Instead of the order

Christianity, CTYI, Boards Band, *******, Torc Interactive, OpFlash, SeinWars, Irish Pubs, IGN, Soldat, Paganism, Couriers, Irish Archives, Tuppenceworth, Wolfenstein, Championship Manager, Clergy, LNA

couldn't this be presented as

Boards Band, *******, Championship Manager, Christianity, Clergy, Couriers, CTYI, IGN, Irish Archives, Irish Pubs, LNA, OpFlash, Paganism, SeinWars, Soldat, Torc Interactive, Tuppenceworth, Wolfenstein

Victor

Do you mean here: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=80 It actually seem to be randomish (might just be another Catholic conspiracy ).

333
44
158
174
92
141
156
167
170
173
256
144
266
273
367
368
347
372

Yoda

Yes, on that page, and also in the Forum Jump popup menubar at the bottom of many pages.

Randomness is less friendly than alphabetic ordering for the user. Can someone fix it?

DeVore

Its ordered by creation date. The dropdown navigation is ordered alphabetically.

It might get fixed but theres a lot on our plate right now.

DeV.

Yoda

The dropdown menus of course don't work on most browsers. I wish someone would fix this.

Dustaz

Works on mine.


Its your fault for not using a non-standard and inconvenient one.

Puck

Works fine on Mozilla.

ecksor

Originally posted by Dustaz
Works on mine.

He said it doesn't work on most, and he's right as far as I know.

Its your fault for not using a non-standard and inconvenient one.

Trolling of that quality should earn a ban.

(Yoda, please don't follow up with a sermon. We know, ok!)

Yoda

No sermon. I am not an expert in these java thinglets, but I wonder if it is a question of one browser being formally compliant with standards and another not. The question is, are those popups standard and the standard isn't properly implemented on e.g. Safari, or are they nonstandard Explorer naughtinesses?

Talliesin

Originally posted by Yoda
The question is, are those popups standard and the standard isn't properly implemented on e.g. Safari, or are they nonstandard Explorer naughtinesses?

The last time I looked (which was quite some time ago) they were largely in the realm of "implementation specific"; that is they didn't break any standards, but there weren't completely covered by any either (one of the relevant RECs was at an early stage back them). They've been through quite a few peoples' hands since then, so I couldn't say now (I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't a single piece of the code I did on them left).

Arguably (depending on just what you say is a "standard" there is no standard way of doing any such menus). [Omitting conversation here we compare the importance of different ISO, NSAI, IEEE, ECMA, W3C and IETF documents for some time without actually adding anything useful to the thread] It was always a design decision that they should be a handy, but not essential, way of navigating the site, and that other means would be available (and since I occassionally use Lynx here I for one will never be able to rely on them).

So it isn't Explorer naughtiness, its code that various people have hammered away at to make the best of a bad situation (the fact that there are no fully compliant browsers - even Amaya has flaws and the best of the bunch - Lynx - fulfills the relevant standards by taking the approach of not implementing any script - support for which is optional).

Funnily when I'm somewhere on boards I don't often frequent I also find the ordering a nuisance, though when I'm in areas I'm used to it makes sense to an old hand that they reflect the history of the site.

Yoda

History of the site? I'd rather have alphabetic functionality.

Dustaz

Originally posted by ecksor
He said it doesn't work on most, and he's right as far as I know.

It works on both ie 5 and ie 6 which would make him very wrong surely?

DeVore

That depends if you are counting "most" to mean "most used browsers" or "majority of unique browser programs."

In the former IE counts for what, 90%+ ... if its the latter then IE counts for 1 and is equal with MeHKEWLBrowser.exe as produced by Jeff K and used by him and his three mates.

Hey xor... Hows my trolling? Dial 1800 KD-GIVE-AFUK !

DeV.

Yoda

Some millions are using Safari now, according to Apple.

Cloud

I think if all forum order ids were changed to 1, the forum jump / main vbulletin listing would become alphabetical - any opinions / opposition?

dahamsta

Yeah, go for it. If I might make a suggestion though: Make them all 10, in case you ever need to pull something to the top temporarily.

adam

Yoda

Originally posted by DeVore
Its ordered by creation date. The dropdown navigation is ordered alphabetically.

Apparently not, else Buddhism would appear above Christianity, no?

ecksor

It does for me.

Yoda

No, it's the forum jump popop menu at the bottom of the page.

ecksor

I'm pretty sure that's not what DeVore meant.

Yoda

So the dropdown menus which I can't use in Safari display correctly in alphabetical order, but the forum jump popup bar at the bottom of the page (which I can use) does not. Also here

ecksor

Originally posted by Yoda
So the dropdown menus which I can't use in Safari display correctly in alphabetical order, but the forum jump popup bar at the bottom of the page (which I can use) does not.

Yes.

Yoda

Which brings us back to the reason I posted this thread.

ecksor

Your obsession with your own bellybutton?

Yoda

My desire to have the forums ordered alphabetically. Alphabetic sorting is a really basic functionality, and I would like it please.

Victor

Ah, come on lads, give him a break. It's one thing to make fun of people, another to make fun when you "haven't done your job"©®.

After all Yoda provides a valuble service - making me look less holier than thou.

Cloud

I'm working on the order now.

Hobbes

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin.

all the forums are all over the shop. For example.

Pix n Mix is in music and radio section.
Politics is in language section?

Quite a few messed around.

Gordon

I think it's just being tinkered with.

Cloud

It's just the way vB displays them, unopened sub-categories appear to own the forums under them, but it is just because of the way they were displayed under the sub-categories alphabetically above them.

I'm currently trying to generate displayorders from the forum title:

mysql> update forum set displayorder=ascii(lower(title));

mysql> update forum set displayorder=ascii(lower(title))*10 where cancontainthreads=0;

Fixed the sub-categories problem with second command.

Nevyn

Well dont like it at all really messed up my day now i have to look and read the drop downs to go where I want to . it was fine before hand an order htat evolved with boards and now it has been tinkered with and but in susposed correct order and lost it's charm

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

well if thaed doesn't like it it most certainly gets my vote!

I don't think it's any handier or anything but it just satisfies the nerd in me who takes great delight in organising all his books by size/name and author

Yoda

Watch out, Mordeth. Pedantry may be infectious. (Naturally – aside from ignoring "A" and "The" in titles, I follow the Unicode Collation Algorithm when ordering my DVDs. So "(The) 13th Warrior" precedes "(A) Beautiful Mind", and "π" follows "What Lies Beneath" because the Greek script follows the Latin script....

Ahem.

Regarding the reordering. Job well done. I am delighted. Makes everything much easier to find. Thank you very much.

dahamsta

LOL. This screwed me up because the IrelandOffline forums are usually right at the bottom of the dropdown on the search page, which I use quite a lot. Prefer it this way though, it's more intuitive.

adam

mneylon

The new order is nice :P
Boards has grown a lot over the last couple of years, so navigating it had become increasingly difficult.
The new dropdowns bring some form of order to what had become a form of chaos

Just my 2c

Yoda

Well, I feel vindicated. "Yoda helps bring order to chaos." Next people will be saying euros and cents....

One assumes, DeVore, that your reverse alphabetical order in the announcement "Buddhists, Blacknights and Bikes" was intentionally ironic.

Lukin Black

The new layout is great. The layout is a lot more logical, not just because it's alphabetic, but the new sub-divisions.

Gordon

I forgot to mention that the other way was worse for iCab users also and this way becomes faster to find fora to move an unwanted thread to. But no-one uses iCab as far as I know!

Originally posted by Yoda
One assumes, DeVore, that your reverse alphabetical order in the announcement "Buddhists, Blacknights and Bikes" was intentionally ironic.

Would that be because of "Zen and the art of..." or am I reading different humour?

Victor

Originally posted by Yoda
Pedantry may be infections.

Perhaps you mean "Infectious"?

sceptre

Originally posted by Victor
Perhaps you mean "Infectious"?

If he did, apparently it is:)

I hate the new layout.

In a few days I'll get used to it. Next week I'll like it. A month after that I'll wonder why it wasn't always so.

Some nice ordering there Cloud. Makes sense. Sci/Tech is a lot more ordered than before.

Fank oo kindly then.


of course now I'm thinking Education should be a subfolder of Community:D

DeVore

Originally posted by Yoda
Well, I feel vindicated. "Yoda helps bring order to chaos." Next people will be saying euros and cents....

I'm glad you feel vindicated however this change has been in the pipe since the science forum started to sprout sprogs. Stick around, you'll find out how much effect badgering us has on any issue.

One assumes, DeVore, that your reverse alphabetical order in the announcement "Buddhists, Blacknights and Bikes" was intentionally ironic.

No. Its much simpler then that.

I couldnt have cared less.

DeV.

Yoda

It's still funny.

ecksor

Originally posted by Yoda
It's still funny.

You might have taken away his vindication, DeVore, but YOU'LL NEVER TAKE HIS AMUSEMENT!

Yoda

Eh? The alphabet is arguably one of the greatest inventions of humankind. Indeed, boards.ie would not exist at all had we not our alphabet. And our alphabet has an order, which all, or most, of you learned long long ago.

DeVore

You forgot a full stop or do you always just stop in the middle of your

ecksor

Yoda rational certainly is.

Yoda

Heh heh Eksor, Yoda rational normally tries to be though sometimes Yoda too much Wolf Blass Chardonnay partaken has....

Cloud

Makes more sense to me, I'm another happy organiser (books, cds, dvds, comics, all alphabeticised). But more importantly, for new users it will be easier (the old ones can still be taught new tricks, believe me, I've taught them many ).

ecksor

Alphabetical order is such a whimsical thing though. As a wannabe mathematician, I care deeply about numerical order and request that the forums be ordered by their forumid.

Are the forumids not Natural numbers? Are the Natural numbers not well ordered? Do all non-empty subsets of them not have a least member? This well ordering principle is vital and underlies many proofs and techniques in Mathematics (see strong induction).

The Natural numbers are arguably one of the greatest inventions of humankind. Without them, boards.ie wouldn't even exist!

Why does nobody give a bollix? I DEMAND THAT YOU ALL GIVE A BOLLIX ABOUT THIS OR I'LL POST INCESSANTLY ABOUT IT UNTIL YOUR EYES BLEED!

Cloud

ecksor, I think this is best discussed in your new Math forum.

J.
--

DeVore

or indeed anywhere very very far away.

DeV.