Nitpick on forum interface: searches bring up wrong post in unthreaded view.

[Vladimir Panteleev]

On Sunday, 27 January 2013 at 20:25:30 UTC, Chad J wrote:
> I just searched for something in the property discussion.  I 
> wanted to link a friend to one of deadalnix's posts, so I put 
> "I'm so happy to read this !!!!" into the search box and 
> punched it.
>
> What it brought up was one of David Nadlinger's posts.  I want 
> to say nothing bad about David Nadlinger's fine post; it just 
> wasn't what I was searching for.  Now, deadalnix's post was on 
> the page, so it wasn't a complete miss, but I expected it to be 
> the first one and it wasn't.  If I sent that link to my friend 
> then he would probably read the wrong part.

Here is what comes up for me as the second result (first result 
is your post):
http://forum.dlang.org/post/uagknsecziepoedcabvr@forum.dlang.org

This is the canonical link for deadalnix's post. If your view 
mode is set to "basic" (default setting), it will redirect to 
this address:

http://forum.dlang.org/thread/kdqrnl$13ft$1@digitalmars.com?page=3#post-uagknsecziepoedcabvr:40forum.dlang.org

Note that the address contains the ID of the thread, the page 
number within the thread, and an anchor (hash fragment) which 
indicates the exact post on the page.

I conclude that either of the following must be true:

1. You are seeing a search result different from what I'm seeing;

2. For some reason, your web browser is ignoring anchors in URLs 
(when handling redirects, or in general).

> There's more frustration in this though: partially because the 
> result was unthreaded.  It's unthreaded, so I can't just click 
> on the post I /actually/ want and get a new URL in my browser 
> that I can copy-pasta.

I don't see what prevents you from doing exactly the above, 
unless your web browser is removing the anchor part of the URL. 
The link would be longer than necessary, and would force the 
threaded-view mode, but it would still link to the respective 
post.

> When I click on "View this thread in threaded view mode" it 
> DOES NOT go to deadalnix's post as my search initially 
> intended: it still selects David's post.

The URL hash fragment, which contains the ID of the specific post 
that got you on that thread page, is not sent to the server. 
However, you'd only see that notice if you either scrolled up, or 
your web browser is ignoring anchors in redirects. The notice 
applies to links without an anchor.

> Now I have to scan through all of the 7625342 subtopics in the 
> property discussion /by hand/ and find the one I'm interested 
> in.

Alternatively, you could right-click the post title to obtain a 
canonical link to the post, which should work with all view modes 
(unless you are using some kind of web browser which ignores 
anchors in redirects).

It is documented here:

http://forum.dlang.org/help#canonical

(If you are using a web browser which does not understand anchors 
in links, please scroll down to the section "Canonical links".)

> Please fix?

Specific suggestions on improving the software are welcome.