The question is simple: how do you read a long post from a newsgroup using a browser. Sticking with popular choices and/or my own solutions, I see that:
- You can use Google Groups, you get 110+ pages of messages, quite hard to follow. The side tree in a frame is usable, but I don't like it a lot. Google Groups is great for searching, I don't like it for browsing.
- You can use my old site, delphi.newswhat.com (you might not want to do this, though). You get a single huge page with the entire thread. Great for storing it. Takes a lot of time, my server will really suffer! There are alternative links on the site to get the thread with only the messages of the last day expanded, but this is far from great.
- You can use my new site, dev.newswhat.com. Here you get the thread and can open individual messages in place, using AJAX. I think it needs some helpers (an open all mesasges link, an open all today messages link, and the like).
Now, I think my approach is quite nice. You might remember I already blogged about this, but development was stuck. Now I've fixed some of the underlying technology (so I have almost all the building blocks I need) and plan devoting some time to the site in the coming weeks, trying to finish it. I'm open to suggestions (feel free to post them here in the blog), and also looking for about ten beta testers willing to spend some of their time on the site (with an actual account I can provide them) and help me with their feedback. No compensation, sorry. To apply, send me email on gmail, at the marco.cantu account. First come, first served...