Technical Problem Clicking "View First Unread" skips over some posts

[Tommyboy]

When I click the "view first unread" option in a thread, it skips over some of the posts. I have had it skip over up to 5 posts or so. I notice this when someone quotes a post, and I have not seen that post so I scroll up and see a bunch of posts that had been posted today, yet I checked the thread the night before. This happened pre-upgrade as well.

I used firefox on windows vista btw.

 

[Tommyboy]

I noticed this happens to me now in this thread. When I click "view first unread" it will skip to the very last post, even if there are others posts that I have not seen yet. I never click the "mark forums read" link, and it always happens in a single thread at a time it seems (until it is closed, and then it seems that another thread starts acting up).

The thread that I was referring to in my OP was either this one, or this one, but those threads are closed now so it is no longer an issue with them. I just figured that showing which threads it has happened to me in may expose a common glitch that those threads share.

After a while I just clicked on the last page for the threads that it happened in and then scrolled down from there, rather then the "view first unread" bringing me to the last post, and then me scrolling up over what it skipped over. It's no big deal, but figured the admins or engineer might be able to figure out what is happening, and maybe can check to see if it happens to them in that S&G thread I linked.

 

[tambourine-man]

The 'display first unread post' link inside a thread is a little flaky.

Is this what you are referring to?

(The colour clash is on a list of minor visual glitches that I'm due to push out a resolution for in the coming weeks... promise! Just need time to sit down and port it over from the test site)

Anyway, the link syntax seems to fluctuate, based on how you enter the thread. As long as the first unread post is not on the same page, then it seems to work fine.

If you're already on the same page as the unread post, then it specifies the post number... which is where is can be a little hit-and-miss.

Have you tried using the direct link icon on the forum listings?

 

[Tommyboy]

Something that I just noticed was that the threads that this happened in have polls, so the direct link icon on the forum listing is not present on threads with polls.

Most of the time I view a thread I; click on forum -> click on thread title -> click "view first unread" (icon that you circled above).

I just found another thread with a poll in it, and sure enough clicking "view first unread" skipped over the recent posts I haven't viewed, and went directly to the last post in the thread. I guess it's safe to say that the issue is exclusive to threads with polls in them.

 

[tambourine-man]

Ah, yeah, hang on... polls do alter things! :D In vB3, poll votes used to bump the thread. Not sure if that's still the case. I don't think it is???

I don't have access to the config files, but vB3 had two options of determining unread posts: either using an end-user's cookies (unreliable), or using server-side database markers.

I honestly don't know how BL is currently set up to handle this. Probably the latter.

I'm wondering if a poll vote somehow resets the marker, and you skip to whatever the nearest chronological post is???

Any further observations are welcome.