So, here's some fun stuff. Those key combinations I mentioned earlier in the week. I've been messing around with them a lot, trying to figure out nice/fun/easy ways to make idkfa less of a chore to use. Granted, memorizing key commands isn't exactly at the top of the list of effective human-computer interface methods, but it's quick, it's easy, and it's unobtrusive to the current baseline interface that everyone has come to know and love.

The new key combination is: Control, Backtick, u. That is, control, let off, backtick, let off, and the letter "u."

What this does is enable the "auto-update" functions on a given page. These functions will take a specific element of the idkfa interface (say, the "Latest Posts" element), and will load that element by itself without refreshing the page. It will continue to do this until you tell it to stop by repeating the key sequence above.

Auto-updaters exist currently for the "N online" bit in the navigation bar, the "Users Online" box on the users online page, and the entire thread when you're viewing a thread.

The intended use for this function is if somebody wants to be on idkfa, but not have to repeatedly refresh the page to see if there's updated content. The user only has to navigation to the page they want, set the auto-updaters going, and come back later.

There are browser plugins that attempt to address this by forcing the browser to refresh the entire page at a certain interval. These work in some cases, but if you're typing a lengthy post and suddenly the plugin refreshes the page, you've lost everything you typed.

This brings idkfa's technology one step closer to "Web 2.0," which leaves me with a bittersweet taste in my mouth. The functionality it provides lets me do neat things like automatically update things people want automatically updated. However, it makes things a lot more complicated. Almost every site these days has functionality that operates asynchronously or completely out of the control of each user's mouse click. I dislike that lack of control, and is the reason why I'm letting users choose whether to enable / disable this type of functionality at will.

Let me know what you guys think. Future plans are to automagicalize the search function, and maybe make the page title change to reflect an update (similar to how Gmail indicates the number of unread messages in its page title).