I think it would be a greate idea to add a function to the forums that will pop-up a window to notify that there is a reply to a subscribed post.

I suggest this because I would like to sit on the forums while at work and would like to know if there is a new post to my message without checking or going to my inbox or My Sitepoint.

Should work similar to AOL's messenger pop-up box.

Just a thought

P.S. User should have the ability to turn this on or off in the forum settings.

That's not a bad idea...

This is available for PM's but the resources needed to add it to subscribed threads outweigh any benefits acheived from it.

A simple popup would add at least 1 query per page plus additional javascript. This would mean over 1 million new queries on the server per month. While that doesn't seem like a lot, it is when you add that to the 30 million or so queries being run by the forums every month now.

Wayne,

Would the million queries entail notifications for just users who are logged on? Or would that be a million queries to notify EVERYONE?

sketch

Personally I think this would just be annoying... I mean new popups every 12 seconds, every time I visit a page? I go to a page cause I want to see the info, not be reminded of what threads I haven't visited yet.

Personal opinion though, I mean if it was done (in spite of the extra load), I'd just turn it off.

That is a rough estimate based on our traffic, the number of people who subscribe to threads regularly, the number of threads. It was then compared to a cross reference with the same feature on PM's to get an idea on how many people would use the feature.

That is then doubled to allow for a worst case scenario and traffic growth. After that it was rounded because even numbers sound better and exact numbers are not needed in this situation.

Sure it would require extra resources. I think it would be an elegant enhancement if one decides to integrate it.

It is a good idea, but I agree with Jeremy that it would get annoying -- I am currently subscribed to many many threads. If there are 50 people online all posting new replies there are going to be popups all over the place.

I think the popup message for PM's is great though.

I just have OE6 in the background checking mail every 5 minutes, and when there is new mail, a little icon appears in the system tray.

maybe a user could check a checkbox to get popups....I too wouldn't want it, but it would be a nice feature for someone who did.

sketch

I just got a new PM --> popup windw --> OK --> open in new window? --> OK == IE6 died.

IE6 does that alot! lol..oh well.

sketch

Yeah, the whole new window thing seems to escape Microsoft

Besides that I'm an very happy with IE6.

Never had a problem with the new window in IE6. I get the popup on just about every visit here or to the vBulletin.com forums and always open in a new window. Never had a problem.

It's not a SitePoint thing, I get it all the time (win2k, IE6 all versions) on every site but not every time.

I had the same problem with IE5.5 on my work NT4 workstation before XP and IE6 came out...

Sketch

I stick to my own suggestion, subscribing to the thread even when you have Email Notification Off.

Would be easy to visit your User CP and see a list of subscribed threads. :\