Specifications

Building Web Forums
C
HAPTER 29
29
BUILDING WEB
FORUMS
719
FIGURE 29.4
The initial view of the article list shows the articles in “collapsed” form.
What we see here are all the initiating articles. None of these are replies; they are all the first
article on a particular topic.
You will see that we have a number of options. There is a menu bar that will let us add a new
post and expand or collapse the view that we have of the articles.
To understand what this means, look at the posts. Some of them have plus symbols next to them.
This means that these articles have been replied to. To see the replies to a particular article, you
can click the plus symbol. The result of clicking one of these symbols is shown in Figure 29.5.
As you can see, clicking the plus symbol has displayed the replies to that first article. The plus
symbol has now turned to a minus symbol. If we click this, all the articles in this thread will be
collapsed, returning us to the initial view.
You might also notice that one of the replies has a plus symbol next to it. This means that there
are replies to this reply. This can continue to an arbitrary depth, and you can view each reply
set by clicking on the appropriate plus symbol.
The two menu bar options, Expand and Collapse, will expand all possible threads and collapse
all possible threads, respectively. The result of clicking the Expand button is shown in Figure
29.6.
Figure 29.4 shows the initial view of the articles in the site that a user would see.
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