Orbmiser wrote:"Not sure why anyone would hate a feature that they have to actually do something (place mouse cursor on a thread and wait) in order to use in the first place."
Simple as I use mouse wheel to scroll thru list reading subject lines. Mouse can stop on a line I'm not even reading but trying to read the one above or below it. The pausing to read other subjects then the zany popup that blocks what I was reading which wasn't the popup one.
Turns out you can scroll the list by that method without placing your cursor directly onto the thread title list, lol. I thought so, because I've never been arsed by such popups when I didn't wish to be and so figured that I was subconsciously NOT placing mine on them... But I just checked this at a few websites and, yep, you can still scroll with your mouse's wheel without having to place the cursor on top of the thread title area. Hope this helps.
Orbmiser wrote:One persons feature is another's annoyance. Can't please everyone. And need to accept your idea of useful may differ from others.
True, that. Which would mean - I'd think - that having the feature enabled but as a user-settable option would be the best way, followed by having it enabled for everyone 100% of the time (since as I explained above, it only works if you place the cursor on the subject title and wait, and explained in this message how to get around that if you are in danger of not paying attention to where your mouse cursor are), followed by not having the option at all (because, unlike the previous two possibilities, this one has no choice about it, you don't get the feature - or annoyance, however you see it - I don't get it, nobody gets it, nobody gets a choice in the matter, one size and we don't care if it fits all, some, or none, lol, that's what you're getting.
Thanks for answering Viking about the animated gifs and was afraid of that. Will just have to accept it then.
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I was going to suggest that you disable images, but that's not a great idea because you might miss images within the body of a message that would be important to you (been there). But I think you can turn off avatars for sure. And I think you might be able to turn off signatures, too, but am not positive. Been thinking about checking that one, myself, because the things are just another way of encouraging people to be lazy - both the poster and the reader. Or vain in some geeky way. I often "sign" my posts, but not always. I'm pretty sure there's a line near the beginning of each and every one that states who wrote them.
palo wrote:Of course the best solution would be for posters to put some thought into making a descriptive heading
It would certainly help. But it isn't perfect; just a little while ago, I ended up having to place the last part of my thread's subject in the first part of the message body due to the size limitations. Seems like everyone/everything has jumped on the "if it's not SHORT, I CBA to read it" bandwagon and the software authors have written their apps accordingly. I blame those text messages that cell phones get. And possibly that Twitter thing, not really sure what it is but I heard the other day it's limited to 140 characters and from the rest of the description it sounded like a method for turning people into zombies.