CTA Featured Threads & Portal [Paid] 2.17.0

[Paul B]

Show featured threads on forum home yes no
Show featured threads in forums yes no

This has been added for the next release:

 

[Martok]

I'm making it an option so the admin can decided whether to display smilies or not.
With odd line heights though there are always going to be issues with text cut off so the only solution would be to have all identically sized smilies, as is the case with the XenForo default smilies.

That's fair enough and great that admins get a choice.

Which browser and OS are you using?
It works as designed for me - once the height of the overlay reaches 300px, a vertical scrollbar appears and the overlay remains at that height no matter how many more lines of text are added.
I can't reproduce the problem you have described.

Window 7, tested in Chrome 21, Firefox 26 and IE11. In each case, windows are maximised.
Screen resolution is 1366x768 (standard laptop resolution) and the taskbar is always visible. When it's hidden then the buttons can be seen.

As I said, it's only the Edit Featured Thread overlay that this issue occurs in, the initial Feature Thread overlay has no problems (though the bottom of the overlay, the bit below the buttons does go below the taskbar).

 

[Paul B]

And setting a max-height inline doesn't stop the overlay from expanding?

I have tested it in Win 7 Chrome and FF and it works fine for me.

 

[Paul B]

Smilies are now a Style Property:

 

[Martok]

And setting a max-height inline doesn't stop the overlay from expanding?

I have tested it in Win 7 Chrome and FF and it works fine for me.

I edited the cta_featuredthreads_edit template as suggested. I found that I had to use style="max-height: 200px" as 250px still had the buttons disappearing off the bottom of the page.

Before I made this edit, I tested the overlays on another computer (Apple Mac running OS X Mavericks and using Chrome 31). This has a much higher resolution and all was fine. When I reduced the resolution to 1366x768 (standard Windows 7 laptop resolution) then the same issue occurred, the Edit Featured Threads overlay lost the buttons off the bottom of the window when the overlay was expanded. As soon as I increased the vertical resolution to 800px and tried again then the buttons were visible.

So it seems to be a problem if you have a vertical screen resolution of less than 800px.

 

[Paul B]

Well the overlay has an overall height when all of the content, title, buttons, margins and padding are all added together. That's always going to be an issue on small resolution screens.

I will add an option to set a smaller maximum height than 300px, which should hopefully resolve the problem.
Be aware though that will affect all screen sizes so you will have to set it up for the lowest resolution screen you expect to use.

Oh and I should add that you can always use the actual page rather than the overlay.
Just right click on the link and open in a new tab.

 

[Martok]

Thanks, Brogan.

Personally I could have worked around it but having an option to set a smaller max height will be great. It seems that it may just be laptops with standard screen resolutions that are affected by this as of course tablets and mobiles use responsive overlays which seem fine (I've quickly checked these). I just thought I'd mention it because there will be others using the standard 1366x768 max screen resolution on laptops (I've never understood why the vertical resolution is this low - and I'm using a not-so-cheap Toshiba laptop!) and it would have been raised at some point.


On a separate note, here's a couple of suggestions for consideration (apologies if they have been suggested already):

1. A listing page (maybe in the ACP) that lists all of the Featured Threads. It could be useful to see what has been listed, along with the duration of their listing and the ability to remove the Featured Thread from the list. It would be easier than scanning the forums to find all of the threads that have been featured
2. An admin option to change the default Feature time - e.g. changing the default from Feature indefinitely to Feature for: and changing the default time length from say the current 2 weeks to 1 week. It could be handy where you have members who forget to set these options and you end up currently with a bunch of threads that are featured indefinitely.

Keep up the good work!

 

[Jeremy]

Paul is already on working on the first one of your suggestions.

 

[Paul B]

A listing page (maybe in the ACP) that lists all of the Featured Threads. It could be useful to see what has been listed, along with the duration of their listing and the ability to remove the Featured Thread from the list. It would be easier than scanning the forums to find all of the threads that have been featured

That is going to be a very big feature so will be some time off.

An admin option to change the default Feature time - e.g. changing the default from Feature indefinitely to Feature for: and changing the default time length from say the current 2 weeks to 1 week. It could be handy where you have members who forget to set these options and you end up currently with a bunch of threads that are featured indefinitely.

Someone already mentioned that earlier in the thread.
A simple template edit will sort that: http://xenforo.com/community/threads/featured-threads-paid.64261/page-4#post-679164

Remember though that the oldest threads will automatically be unfeatured once the limit is reached, which is already an option.
So assuming you have that set to a reasonable value and a regular number of threads being featured, it won't be an issue.

 

[Paul B]

@Martok, there are now two new Style Properties for the feature and edit overlay maximum heights.

 

[Martok]

@Martok, there are now two new Style Properties for the feature and edit overlay maximum heights.

View attachment 62899

Brilliant!

 

[Code Monkey]

Looking good @Brogan

An idea for down the road when it's polished and you are bored. Maybe have an option to have a specified number of likes automatically feature the thread for a specified time.

 

[Martok]

Sorry Brogan, me again.

I thought I would test out the censoring for the Featured Threads block. I'm glad to say that anything typed in the message box is indeed censored However, anything typed into the title box isn't!

I'll refrain from posting a screenshot but I'm sure you'll want to check this out yourself.

 

[Paul B]

Whoops!
I didn't test that so I'll make sure that gets into the next release.

 

[Paul B]

That has now been rectified @Martok.

Apologies for that oversight - I'll try and get a third point release out soon(ish).

 

[Martok]

That has now been rectified @Martok.

Apologies for that oversight - I'll try and get a third point release out soon(ish).

Blimey, that was a quick fix! Thank you.

I think it's unlikely that any of my members will spot this (but if they do they'll get a big slap ) so I'm not worried about it getting rushed out.

Anyway, thanks again and keep up the good work and great support on this.

 

[Paul B]

Would have been quicker if I didn't have to deal with pesky real life stuff

 

[Paul B]

I've had a request on AdEx to allow users to hide/dismiss featured threads. Any thoughts on adding this as an option?

So I had another think about this but it requires adding fields to the xf_user_option table to store the settings, which is something I'm reluctant to do for such a trivial function.

I've only seen it requested by one individual (Digital Doctor) so I'm not convinced it's worth the time and effort.

 

[The Sandman]

So I had another think about this but it requires adding fields to the xf_user_option table to store the settings, which is something I'm reluctant to do for such a trivial function.

TBH, I'm ambivalent about this - I view the forum home repeatedly through the day and it is repetitive to see the same Featured Threads over and over (not that I would dismiss them as admin). After a while, I really don't see them at all. So I can understand some members wanting to dismiss them.

I've only seen it requested by one individual (Digital Doctor) so I'm not convinced it's worth the time and effort.

Yeah, but he complains more than any twelve normal individuals.

Just kidding - @Digital Doctor visits AdEx frequently throughout the day so I do get his point (and value his input). And for the record he only mentioned it once.

 

[Paul B]

Yes, I can understand the request, everyone likes to be able to control their experience on forums.
It is a lot of code (relatively) for such a small thing though and will result in core tables being changed, hence my reluctance.