Finally: Topic preview

I've always hated how you could never get a preview of the first post of a topic by hovering over it like you could in vBulletin. But as I've just read on IPB's development blog (Invision Power Services -> IP.Board 3.1.0 Dev Update: Topic Preview), they've announced that this feature is comin' to town!

They've implemented it so elegantly and intelligently, It just looks so awesome. I think it's great to see that they're not only implementing many basic (but useful and important features) that vBulletin has had for so long... but they're doing it in style.

 

Another 'one-up' on vBulletin. Great work!

 

Anyone know the background on the preview feature? A long time ago I thought 'somewhere on the internet' someone had typed that the developers did not thread preview.

 

It has it's pros and cons - if you have to click it then that may become tiresome for some users. On rollover would be better

I do like how they're not just copying features, but taking them a step further when they can!

 

It should be on rollover, and it should be on the title of the topic. Making it two clicks and over on the right is counter intuitive, and will annoy people even more than not having it at all.

 

I'm not really sure how it would exactly annoy people, but it would be nice to have it as an option. Matt said that it was odd on mouseover because its an Ajax function so the click to preview was a smoother user experience. I doubt it would be overly hard to mod it into a rollover if you wanted though (would be nice as a setting).

 

I think it's learned behaviour. I know if made mine click-only now, there would be a riot.

 

looks nice, might be a bit big for my taste, but it looks sharp
nice job IPB

 

If I owned IPB, and I got a tech person to change the way this behaves in 3.1, when 3.1.1 or 3.1.5 came out, could it be considered part of the template, and not need re-coding?

I realize I'm asking for speculation, and I may not even be using the correct terminology.

 

For IP.Board users, it's better than not having any preview at all. This is one of the major quirks that irks me () when trying to use/browse an IP.Board forum, so I'm glad that I will at least have some sort of utility to see a topic preview.

So although hover-over is best, I'd rather have click-required than not having a preview at all.

 

Personally, I like the way it's been accomplished. I do not use/like topic preview and I don't like the way it pops up on vB sites. (I have AADD and find the pop-up previews to be very distracting.)

This way, if you want a preview, you can get one heckuva nice preview. And since I don't, I don't have to put up with it popping up every time I move my mouse.

Mark B., you've missed the mark. The topic preview menu appears on rollover and the preview is then only a single click away.

From the IPS Company Blog page - Invision Power Services -> IP.Board 3.1.0 Dev Update: Topic Preview

[Emphasis mine - M.E.]

This is another of those instances I brought up in another thread. The feature doesn't work the same in IPB as it does in vB. Because it is IPB and not vB. No matter how much people try to make them the same, they aren't the same.