jaxry
commented
9 years ago Once the client-sided app is in better shape, I'll begin working on this. Here's a rough outline:
After a thread is requested and the graph is generated, the server will permanently store the graph for future requests. Whenever the thread is requested again (automatically or not), any new posts since the last refresh are simply appended to the graph and the force-direct simulation is iterated a couple times to ensure the new posts are positioned correctly. (This will not change the overall shape of the graph).
As for the client, the graph will be auto-updated with Ajax. Any new posts since the last request will be indicated to the user through notifications, special node highlighting, or something like that.
lehitoskin
There should be a box that allows auto-updating (with each refresh having a longer wait if there have been no new posts). I can see this being disorienting, however, as the software seems to completely reorient the graph whenever there's a new post.
Say, for example, you are reading a particular post when the page reloads and the graph has an entirely different orientation - that would unfortunately move the bubble the user was reading and force that user to go hunting through the map to find the bubble and resume reading.
Another problem I've found is that when the page is reloaded and the configuration is changed, I'm not entirely certain which posts were added to the map since the last reload or what posts were there from before but I just hadn't read them yet.