Easily going back to where you last were

March 31, 2007 2:46 AM

"There have been 45 questions and 600 answers since your last visit. Click here to go to where you left off."
posted by shokod to Feature Requests at 2:46 AM (10 comments total)

I like the "x questions since your last visit" feature, but I usually (painlessly, of course) have to calculate how many pages to go back to get to where I've left off. My programming skillz = 0 so I don't know if that's much more difficult than just giving the information about how many questions have been asked since my last visit. But if it could go to the right page and even a target to the last question that was posted, that would be fantastic and cool.
posted by shokod at 2:46 AM on March 31, 2007

You don't remember what the last thread you've read was? You could just scroll down to a post where the comment counter and new counter are the same.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 4:36 AM on March 31, 2007

Use a RSS reader. It will keep track of every question that you have or haven't read.
posted by Rhomboid at 5:39 AM on March 31, 2007

I'd say "here" in that sentence is fairly vague. Is it the oldest new question or the oldest new answer?
posted by mathowie (staff) at 6:51 AM on March 31, 2007

Is it the oldest new question or the oldest new answer?

Well, you could actually link the two numbers to cover both, and delete the "click here" bit entirely. But I'm not sure that's really all that useful for the comments.
posted by occhiblu at 11:13 AM on March 31, 2007

How the heck does that counter even work? The number displayed always seems kind of random, as does the new comment counter on threads.
posted by Mr. President Dr. Steve Elvis America at 2:25 PM on March 31, 2007

How the heck does that counter even work? The number displayed always seems kind of random, as does the new comment counter on threads.

Seconding this question, that thing doesn't actually seem to provide any information at all.
posted by !Jim at 2:52 PM on March 31, 2007

i don't think it works right unless you are regularly logging in and out. i may be wrong, but it seems i've heard matt say something to that effect in the past. also, take into account that the front pages are static and refreshed on a timed basis.
posted by quonsar at 5:22 PM on March 31, 2007

By 'here' I meant the last question.
So let's say I missed out on AskMe for a week and there were about 280 new questions. I can guess that that's around 7 pages and find it, of course. But I was just wondering that if the information on how many questions were asked since our last visit was already available then couldn't that information be translated to a hyperlink to navigate to where we left off?
So in my week case, I could click on the link by the counter and it would bring me to http://ask.metafilter.com/index.cfm?page=7, and start at the middle or where the last question that was posted lies, using the same information that the counter received and then I can just happily start there.
Sorry if that was confusing. I know it's not a big deal and I can find the questions easy enough, but I thought the features page was for things that weren't only a big deal, but also nifty.
As far as RSS readers: the question headlines don't always let the question be known, and also it doesn't give information about how many posts or if a best answer was selected, to which I pay attention.
posted by shokod at 5:26 PM on March 31, 2007

How the heck does that counter even work? The number displayed always seems kind of random, as does the new comment counter on threads.

Thirding this. I learned to ignore that number long ago. It has nothing to do with anything, as far as I can tell.
posted by bingo at 11:20 PM on April 1, 2007