Mark Forum as Read

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

When I click on "Mark Forum as Read" for any forum or subforum, Simtropolis almost always pops up an "are you sure?" box. Once in a blue moon, it doesn't do that for a whole day. I'm sensing that there's a setting somewhere that decides whether that time waster will be performed.

1) I vote for the site default to suppress the popup and simply do what I just told it to do (mark all as read).

2) If the site default goes against my preference, then I humbly request that I be granted the power to set my own preference to execute "Mark as Read" without confirmation.

Thanks!

Jeff Fisher

[Cyclone Boom 17,031]

When marking the site as read, it's a non-reversible action, and so the popup is a way to prevent people accidently clicking to initiate this without being sure. It's triggered by a small script from the alert dialog framework which allows it to appear from the link as you've found. Should this not happen, I'd imagine the most likely cause is when the site theme data can get cluttered and fragmented after a while, and it can be fixed by rebuilding this (which we do every so often).

My personal thought is the popup is a good thing since it allows the confirmation or to decline and not proceed. A user preference is a worthy idea, but I'm afraid that's not feasible without custom development to the board software. This would involve a plugin hook to integrate, and then an entry per user written to the database.

For reference to others, here's what the popup looks like:

One way to avoid this is by middle clicking the Mark Site Read link.

Then it loads a redirection page for a few seconds:

This will cause the URL to load and bypass the confirmation. I got @CloneBoom to confirm this behaviour and it successfully marked the site as read in full all the same. Alternatively if not having middle click ability, the URL can be copied and pasted into the browser address bar to be visited.

It'll look like this:

https://community.simtropolis.com/markallread/?csrfKey=<Token>

There is a token key on the end which is a sequence of characters as assigned to one's browser session while visiting the site. This is needed for security purposes to prevent malicious interception, since it needs to match up or otherwise the action will be denied.

(There's a few functions where the board software uses this too.)

The same also applies to marking an individual forum as read using the equivalent option at the top of each. An exception to this is for clicking an icon on a forum from the main index page (or on a subforum). This marks as read immediately without any confirmation.

Hope these little tips might help.