TIP: Stop fussing with forums you don't want to read

I don't want to read all of the forums...

...and I hate multiple steps of

1. load page
2. find the mark as read button and click it
3. close the page. 
4. NOW you can read the ones you care about.

Sure it's trivial, and to an extent much of this can be done from the forum home page.  However there are subforums that make you open a the forum, and then load the subforums.  There has to be a work around.  Besides, I like shortcuts.  That's why I use Logos instead of the TOC in all my paper books.

This one is a little off topic perhaps but it's long on help for the many of us who endeavor to keep up with the forums in general but who do not want to read all of the forums.

Case in point, I do not own a MAC and thus I really don't want to read the Logos 4 Mac forum or the Logos for Mac 1 forum  (forums #75 and #46 respectively)

Nor do I have the new video series on learning Hebrew and Greek (though I feel like the only one who didn't get it.  Too bad I didn't have the money.  sigh.)  That said I do not want to read the head forum "Learn to Use ..." or the sub forums Greek with Logos Bible Software and Hebrew with Logos Bible Software.   (forum numbers #83 ,#84 and #85 respectively.)

Where are you getting those numbers?

The Forum numbers are coming from the addresses of the forums.  Hover over a forum link, like one of those above and look at the task bar in your browser, (or right click and choose properties) you'll see the actual link for the Hebrew with Logos Bible Software forum is: http://community.logos.com/forums/85.aspx .

Why do the forum numbers matter?

It matters because we're going to use those numbers and links in order to create a script page which will....

1. Load each of the forums you're not interested in and mark them read
2. automatically refresh after a few seconds and drop you in a list of all the unread posts from the forums you do want to keep up with.

What else do I need?

Before we get started you're going to need to get a little snippet of javascript.  I'll tell you what it is, but I also want you to know how I got it.   

Click on a forum name and look at the top right hand corner and you'll see two links.

One says  "Write a New Post" , the other says "Mark all read"  It's the one which says "mark all read" that we're going to use.  hover over it as instructed above and you can see the javascript which is this:

javascript:__doPostBack('ctl00$ctl00$bcr$bcr$MarkAllReadForm1$ctl01$MarkAllRead','')

Notice at the very end of the line just before the close parenthesis that is not a double quote: "  it is two single quotes: ''.  The distinction is vital. 

The single quotes mean that some data can go in there, an additional variable if you will.  Only that additional variable is not declared because it is the current page address. 

The Solution!

The solution to not wanting to read a forum and just mark it read with a single click then is to call that javascript with the proper page address.

Thus to mark any given forum as read we use the javascript with the page address inserted between the double quotes.

For instance to mark all of the "Greek with Logos Bible Software" (Forum #84) as read simply use the following address in a link or shortcut.:

 javascript:__doPostBack('ctl00$ctl00$bcr$bcr$MarkAllReadForm1$ctl01$MarkAllRead','http://community.logos.com/forums/84.aspx

As you can see, if you know the forum number you can make a quick link for any forum you don't want to mess with and simply mark them as read.

Next steps.

From here you have a few options.  You could simply create a shortcut for all of the forums you don't like and click it, or automate it with a script.

Or here's a fun and workable one. 

In your web browser create a link /bookmark folder and put bookmarks for all of these forums in there.  put the bookmark folder on your taskbar and with a single center click on the folder, all of the tabs will open and mark themselves read, leaving the last one for the unread posts. 

Hope this helps!