"View new posts": stored search lifetime

catkin · 09-14-2009, 05:02 AM

Hello

How about extending the lifetime of the "View new posts" stored search?

Sometimes I do that search and work through the posts in it but when answering has taken a while or I've been interrupted, clicking on a next page looses the search -- presumably because it has been aged out.

Best

Charles

jeremy · 09-14-2009, 12:31 PM

We're currently evaluating whether it may be possible to completely replace the default search here at LQ with something better. Unfortunately I don't have any ETA or additional details.

--jeremy

salasi · 09-14-2009, 03:55 PM

You are talking about 'new posts' rather than 'latest posts'? (I find the definitions of those two to be rather too close and I wish there was more distinct terminology that could be used (new threads and latest posts perhaps?), but that's a bit off topic).

I have a work-around for 'latest posts', but it doesn't work for 'new posts', in spite of the similarity.

Looking at the link that gets used, the critical parameter seems to be 'daysprune', which, by default, is set 7. If you think that a moderate amount more 'history' can solve your problem setting 'daysprune' to, eg, 14 would give you a lot more to play with.

You could do this manually on a case-by-case basis, or you could bookmark latest post with a daysprune parameter set at 14. When you go back into the history, the daysprune does not get set back to the default value, so that's fine, as it allows you to work back as far as you would like into the history.

And if you are an opera user, and use their speed-dial thingummy, you can set a thumbnail there to use 14 days (or something else) as a value for daysprune.

The only trouble is that there is a lot more stuff in latest posts than in new posts, and that means there are more pages to scroll through. This might not suit you at all.

catkin · 09-14-2009, 04:32 PM

Thanks jeremy and salasi for replies

@salasi: It's not how many days history the search looks through that's the problem, it's how long I can use the search's results before getting a (sorry haven't logged the message) mesage that says no results found on clicking to move to another page.

I assume (ha!) that "View new posts" is looking back through a) threads that are new or b) threads with new posts -- both since I last ran a "View new posts" (or some reasonable cut-off it was several days since I did it). FYI, in case it's any use, that's my intuitive guess about what it's searching for.

Best

Charles