===== How to improve RecentChanges =====


Some sparse suggestions.

~1) Replace  ""&rArr;"" with ""&lArr;"": IMO it makes more sense to have the arrow point FROM the author TO the PAGE, for instance: --- ""<span class="recentchanges">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;(<a href="http://wikka.jsnx.com/UserAdmin/revisions" title="View recent revisions list for UserAdmin">08:45 UTC</a>) [<a href="http://wikka.jsnx.com/UserAdmin/history" title="View edit history of UserAdmin">history</a>] - &nbsp;<a href="http://wikka.jsnx.com/UserAdmin">UserAdmin</a> &lArr; DarTar  <span class="pagenote">[Updating links and changelog]</span>""
~~&Get rid of the arrow altogether and just write "by" - it's clearer and avoids rendering problems. --JW
~
~~&The arrow doesn't show up correctly on all platforms, depending on charset etc. Use &#8594; instead. -- TKN
~
~~&make it configurable ;-)  i like the double arrow very much. -- MinusF
~~~&Agreed -- DarTar
~
~1) Give admins freedom to choose through an action parameter what links should be displayed: history, revisions, none, both;
~
~1) Make the author's name clickable if the corresponding page exists. (see FormatUserMethod) --- Since this might clutter up the page with a lot of links, I suggest we add a simple username check to the link parser and a special CSS class for userpages. The parser will check if a given link corresponds to an existing user page; if it does, the link is rendered with a ##class="user"## attribute. If it doesn't, raw text is displayed instead of a link. For instance:  --- ""<span class="recentchanges">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;(<a href="http://wikka.jsnx.com/UserAdmin/revisions" title="View recent revisions list for UserAdmin">08:45 UTC</a>) [<a href="http://wikka.jsnx.com/UserAdmin/history" title="View edit history of UserAdmin">history</a>] - &nbsp;<a href="http://wikka.jsnx.com/UserAdmin">UserAdmin</a> &lArr; <a href="http://wikka.jsnx.com/DarTar" style="text-decoration:none; border:1px black dotted;">DarTar</a> <span class="pagenote">[Updating links and changelog]</span>"" --- Such functionality makes sense also outside the scope of the RecentChanges action. It would be nice to mark links to internal user pages in a different, CSS-driven way. As a further extension, links corresponding to user pages could be given a specific tail (much as external links), for instance an icon or a some specific HTML code. See LinkTails for further discussions on this issue.

Your thoughts?

~&My four "biggies" about our current RecentChanges are all to do with **content** and its usability and usefulness:
~~1) Change the name "RecentChanges" to "RecentlyChanged" (both page and action!) - analogous to "RecentlyCommented" - because that's what it **is**. (Note that I have already created a "RecentComments" page, and have been able to do that since there is at least an action provided for both "views"; for "changes" this is not the case.)
~~1) Make a **real** RecentChanges action.
~~1) Make corresponding pages for //both// actions like we have now for comments.
~~1) Provide feeds (for both) in several modern formats: RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, Atom.
~~~& See [[RSSHandler]] -- DarTar
~&(Side note: Corresponding feeds for comments would be useful, too.) --JavaWoman

====feed icons====

seems like [[http://www.feedicons.com/ | these]] icons will be the standard in the future.
the xml icon is nice but it's not clear that it is a feed.  i have already [[http://obiit.org/orsorum/RecentChanges | replaced]] it (also please note that
it is a feddburner feed actually -- perhaps this could be also configurable?)
~& MinusF, I like very much the new icons, thanks for suggesting this (although I find the one on your site way too big). As for human readable feeds, instead of using an external service, a nice alternative is to provide styling through CSS (see [[RSSHandler]] for some first tests) -- DarTar
~~& the external feed service is not for human readable feeds, it's because of the statistics and such... --MinusF
also i would like to add the feed icon (a small one 16x16 perhaps) to $navigation_links
and $logged_in_navigation_links but it's not trivial at the moment as far as i can tell...
~&It will be trivial to add custom menu items, including a feed icon, once WikkaMenus and WikkaMenulets are available with the [[WikkaSkinOptimization | new template]] -- DarTar

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