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View Full Version : The Currently Active Users list


Mr. Picklesworth
March 21st, 2007, 08:16 PM
I scrolled down past the list of forum sections for just a moment today and had a startling revelation:

You know that list of currently active users? You know, the one that takes up half the page? You can't miss it. It doesn't look much like a list, actually, but we'll ignore that for now.

That list is a waste of space, bandwidth, time on my end and time on the server's end. It looks horrible, and it is useless. More technically speaking, it pushes important information such as the legend and the archive link very far down on the page so that they are unnoticed unless the user has a 30" monitor in portrait mode.
Has anyone here actually read that list to find any kind of information?
This forum seems to have been attacked by weird, incoherent heaps of words these days and I for one find them really unattractive. The tags clouds at least have some purpose, though, and they only take up about 5% the space of this thing.

I'll give you this, though: It is pretty cool to see. This forum is blazing with activity!
...That is why we have the Forum Statistics right below, which could just as effectively show how many names are listed in that glob.
I suppose people have used it to contact moderators, administrators and other special people before, too, since they get colourful names in the list.
Solution: How about just list the special people to save space, time and bandwidth? My name is on that list but it serves no purpose except to pad the space around the special people.

qpwoeiruty
March 21st, 2007, 08:31 PM
Wow. You're right! That's 40KB of information on every page just for the userlist.

(Most users ever online was 9,064) :o

Kateikyoushi
March 21st, 2007, 10:02 PM
I turned it off long ago by clicing that - sign on the right, but it only turns off displaying.

Mr. Picklesworth
March 21st, 2007, 11:13 PM
Oops, I somehow missed the - sign on that one. (I'm blaming it on the section being so huge).

It feels like Ajax, so it won't be downloading like this. Still, I think it should be turned off by default. The bottom on these pages looks really nice, so it's a shame to not see it!

Kateikyoushi
March 22nd, 2007, 12:24 PM
I think it still downloads the list because when I saw your post I turned it on to see how it looks like and it was immediaely displayed so I assume it is still loaded just not displayed.

yabbadabbadont
March 22nd, 2007, 12:50 PM
Apparently, the list is no longer sorted alphabetically. It used to be. I would glance at it occasionally to see if anyone I knew was on. Without it being sorted, it is pretty useless for that now.