Each discussion area has a page for submitting new messages, which can either
be "top-level postings" or replies
to other people's posted messages.
Forum Message Types
There are two basic types of messages that you can submit, as determined by
the type of link you used to get to the posting page. In either case the
same form is used, but its behavior depends on how the posting page was reached.
- Top-Level Messages
- Top-level postings are messages that start a new "thread", or
topic of conversation. This is the type of message that will be posted
if you used a Post link to reach the posting page. Each of the
forum's summary contents pages include a Post link in the main navigation
bar, and there is also a Post link in every individual message
page.
The threaded discussion outline always displays top-level messages at the
left hand margin of the page. (IdeaXchg also uses a special flavor of
top-level posting called a placeholder
message, but these can not be generated by the usual Posting
procedure.)
- Reply Messages
- When you click on the Reply link in an individual message
page, the
posting page appears with a default Subject line derived from the previous
message. If you submit a message in this fashion, i.e. as a Reply, it
will be "threaded" into the organization of the discussion area so
as to indicate its relationship the preceding message, which may in turn be
a reply to another message, and so on. There is no Reply link in the
main forum navigation bars, because a reply can only be made relative to a
specific prior message. The threaded discussion outline groups
messages by thread, with replies indented under their "parent"
message.
Fields in the Posting Form
The message posting form typically includes the following fill-in fields and
controls:
- Subject Field
- a required line of text that will be displayed in the discussion outline
as well as the title of the generated message page. For top-level
postings this field will be initially blank, but for replies
it will be initialized to "Re: " + the subject line of the message
to which it is a reply. (The "Re: " is not repeated when you
reply to a reply.)
It's a good idea to give some thought to the wording of your message subject
lines, and you should also bear in mind that you can modify the default
subject line supplied for Reply postings. You will not be able to
directly alter any part of a message after it has been posted (but an
administrator with web authoring permissions can edit or delete
messages). Try to keep the title of your message short, but
sufficiently specific to convey the gist of it. When posting a Reply,
consider appending some brief further qualification, to save people time
when they are looking at the compact discussion threads outline.
- From Field
- generally a required field, this is where you would enter your name,
nickname, or initials. (For private, password-protected forums, this
field may be omitted, because the user has already been identified.)
Some browsers support auto-completion, which can save you a little time by
choosing a previously entered value from a pop-up list that appears when you
double-click on the empty field. What you enter in the From field will
also be included (along with the subject, date, and
time) in the corresponding line of the discussion
outline.
- Keywords List
- a list from which you can select one or more keys to be attached to your
message. To select more than one keyword, hold down the Ctrl key and
click on your selections. (The usual Windows Shift and Ctrl key
shortcuts apply.) By convention, the initially selected key is the
name of the forum or a similar word. You should generally leave at
least this default keyword selected. (Unfortunately FrontPage doesn't
make it easy to force a value to stay selected).
When a message page is generated from your posting, it includes a header line of the form:
Keywords: key1, key2, key3, ...
You can employ these keywords in full-text searching via the message
area's Search page.
- Comments Text Box
- where you enter the body of your message, which can be as long as you
like. A scroll bar will appear if it's needed. Note that white
space formatting and hard newlines are not generally preserved exactly as
you enter them, so punctuation is recommended. If you have a long
message, it may be more convenient to prepare the body of the
message in any text editor. Then copy the message text
onto the Windows clipboard and then paste it into the Comments field of the
posting page.
If you end a sentence a single newline by pressing the Enter key once in the
Comments field, the line break will not be preserved; it just turns
into a space. But if you press Enter twice, introducing a visible
blank line, the paragraph break will be preserved in the generated
page for your posting. Also note that tabs and multiple consecutive
spaces will be turned into a single space.
One convenience is the automatic generation of hyperlinks for pieces
of text that look like URLs; these forms will turn into live hyperlinks in
the posted message page: http://www.ideaxchg.com
or mailto:fubar@ideaxchg.com.
Unfortunately, however, you can not simply enter raw HTML into your message;
it doesn't work.
- Post Message Command Button
- click once on this button (don't double-click) to submit the
message that you've entered into the posting form. If you leave the
posting page without clicking on the Post Message button (or equivalent
keyboard action), no message will be posted. If you omit a required
field when you attempt to post the message, you'll receive an error message
and be allowed to complete the form and try again.
After you have clicked on the Post button once, wait a moment and you should
receive a posting confirmation page, which displays the information you
submitted. This is a sure indication that your message was
posted. Don't get impatient and click the Post button more than once,
or you may end up making redundant postings.
- Reset Form Command Button
- clears everything you entered in the form, and restores the default
Keyword selection.
What Happens When You Post a Message
When you post a message, two things happen:
- a message page is generated
- the discussion outline is updated
These pages reside in a discussion folder (directory) reserved for that
forum. The details of this architecture and message posting logic are
governed entirely by FrontPage 2000's automated Discussion Component, which
also relies on the FrontPage Server Extensions.
- Message Pages
- Each new message page is named with the next available sequence number,
and the page's title is the subject line, as
entered. The layout of message pages includes a standard header and
footer, with the re-formatted message fields in the middle. Navigation
bars are provided in the message header and footer, including links to Reply
and Next/Previous/Up for traversing the threads.
- Discussion Outline
- There is an indented outline of all threads in the discussion area, named
tocproto.htm, which is generated and maintained automatically as postings
and replies are made. Each line of the discussion outline includes the
subject (title), author (from
field), and the date and time of the posting. This page is used (as an
"include file") to construct the framed and
unframed versions of the main Discussion contents page for that
forum.
A useful feature of FrontPage's tocproto.htm file is that each line of the
discussion outline is "bookmarked" or tagged with the message
number that the line refers to. This means that one can create a link
directly to a particular message's line within the outline, e.g. to point to
the start of a thread. (IdeaXchg makes extensive use of this
capability in order to provide the most convenient possible connection
between edited articles or help
pages and corresponding placeholder
discussion threads.)
IdeaXchg
help page
Copyright © 2000, SpaceTime Systems