Sometimes I see something, at work or elsewhere, that I think would be neat to share with my fellow Halfbakers, such as a really halfbaked-looking car that just drove past. These kinds of things, however, really aren't suitable for their own posting as an idea. A really good example was that story about the Kangaroo jumping in a guy's house in Australia in the middle of the night (the news story is now posted in its entirety on my profile page) that strongly reminded me of Unabubba. It was deleted by a moderator because it wasn't actually an idea, nor was it my own work. Completely understandable! I'm not complaining about the deletion!
What would be nice is to be able to post such things on my profile page in a special Notification box, and whenever something new is added, my username would glow green wherever it appears as a clickable link. This would let everyone know just by looking at my username at the bottom of an annotation or idea that I've put something new on my profile page that I'd like to share, and if you want to take a look, feel free to click on my username. If you don't want to be bothered by such things, then don't click there.
Maybe, instead of a Notification box, it could be triggered everytime a profile is modified. I like the Notification box, though.-- 21 Quest, Apr 05 2009 Solution for prank alarms http://failblog.fil...rebox-trap-fail.jpglike this you mean ? [FlyingToaster, Apr 06 2009] Multiply http://www.multiply.comWhat [po] said. [zen_tom, Apr 06 2009] Combine a:visited with a:after, or chaining pseudo-classes with pseudo-elements https://stackoverfl...ith-pseudo-elementsMentioned in my anno [notexactly, Apr 11 2019] I'm just wondering, but why all the bones? Is it really so bad it's not worth annotating?-- 21 Quest, Apr 06 2009 Some use Multiply for this very thing.-- po, Apr 06 2009 I'm guessing the bones are from people who: a) appreciate the crisp, clean aesthetic of the bakery and b) believe that the bakery should not deviate from its original purpose.
There have been several attempts at spin-off half bakery forums, but I'm not sure if any are currently active. These forums fail to thrive due to the lack 'fresh blood' the bakery itself receives (thanks, in part, to HB high page ranking in Google)-- xaviergisz, Apr 06 2009 I frequently check and recheck baker's profile pages. I found a quote on one that I printed out and have kept to this day. If that makes any difference to your idea or not.-- blissmiss, Apr 06 2009 Doesn't really make a difference, Blissy, but it's kinda my point. This would save you the time and trouble of checking and rechecking your fellow Bakers' profile pages. If there are any changes, you'll know at a glance because their username glows green. Simply altering the color of the username links doesn't negatively affect the aesthetic of the Halfbakery, or change its purpose. If there have been enough Bakers who like to stay in touch that they've created entire spinoff websites, then something like this would be great because it doesn't require an alternate site, and it doesn't clutter up idea postings with chatter and gossip, which *does* happen quite frequently. I really don't understand the level of negativity being directed at such an innocuous suggestion.-- 21 Quest, Apr 06 2009 Are all the names green until they are first clicked? That would be kind of ugly.
As it is now, visited links (including usernames) are colored red until either I clear my cache, or the linked page content changes. I don't clear cache often, so I should get an indication that your user page has changed if your username link color returns to black again. If I was interested in that, I might note it.-- tatterdemalion, Apr 06 2009 Great ;o link. Not that I see the connection but it's still a great link.-- blissmiss, Apr 06 2009 // As it is now, visited links (including usernames) are colored red until either I clear my cache, or the linked page content changes. I don't clear cache often, so I should get an indication that your user page has changed if your username link color returns to black again. If I was interested in that, I might note it. //
That's accomplished by linking to a new anchor on the page every time it changes, so your browser doesn't recognize it as a URL you've visited before. The same could be done for user pages, but I don't see where the anchor id would come from. Actually, I guess it could be a hash (not even a cryptographically secure one) of the current page contents. Hmm.
Another way to accomplish it would be to track in the database the date and time of each user's most recent visit to each other user's user page. That would be similar to how "before last session" in the recent view works, AFAICT, though I think that only stores each user's last activity date/time, so it's cheap to store (O(n)). This, on the other hand, would require adding a table or several to the database, and the upper bound of the data storage requirement would be O(n^2) where n is the number of users. (The actual storage requirement would be much less, because most users don't ever visit more than a few other users' pages, but it would still be quite a bit probably.)
Regarding aesthetics, I think a green glow would clash with the established visual style of the site. (I actually think the visited link color is a bit too bright too, but it's not really annoying.) Maybe just put a little asterisk or dot next to the username instead, using something like a:visited:after in CSS, except that's not allowed [link], so I don't know—maybe make it bold?-- notexactly, Apr 11 2019 Can't believe I didn't see this reply before... I've been gone far too long. I like that idea a lot.-- 21 Quest, Mar 26 2020 This has, of course, since been rendered somewhat obsolete as an idea by the HB Facebook page.-- 21 Quest, Mar 26 2020 The whatnow ? I'm not on FB, though.-- FlyingToaster, Mar 26 2020 FT, long time no see man! Yeah, it's a thing. Pretty cool actually.-- 21 Quest, Mar 26 2020 It's great to see the toaster back. I have missed you so much.-- blissmiss, Mar 26 2020 random, halfbakery