WebBoard 4.0 introduced a much-requested feature--automatic marking of messages. However, although users could still manually mark messages as read, they had to mark all messages read across all conferences. It was not possible to mark messages as read one conference at a time. Many users requested that WebBoard 4.1 include both automatic marking of messages and a way for users to manually mark all new messages read in a given conference, leaving unread messages in other conferences marked as New.

How the MARK READ feature works in WebBoard 4.1

This service release adds marking of messages as read on a conference-by-conference basis. Users now have three choices for marking new messages as read:

• Automatic marking at logoff or after 30 minutes of inactivity
• Manual marking of specified conferences
• Manual marking of all new messages in all conferences

The toolbar now contains a Mark Read button. Clicking this button takes users to a Mark Read page where they can select the conferences to be marked as read or choose to mark all conferences as read. The automatic marking of new messages works as it did previously (the user indicates whether or not to mark automatically on the user profile).

Consequences

From a programming standpoint, O'Reilly could not add the marking of messages by conference without affecting the New/Marked Read status of messages for each user. The first time a user logs in after you upgrade to WebBoard 4.1, all messages will be marked as read. O'Reilly suggests that you use the date search feature to find New messages.

Additional updates/changes

1. Fixed a misspelling on the New Messages background image for the Pizarro scheme (replaces newback.gif).
2. Fixed a bug that caused all board managers to be removed as managers whenever the board was edited.
3. Board managers can no longer see users of all boards when performing board management functions with the user list in the left frame.
4. The Search User form now accepts a single quote (') as part of the search string in the search text box.
5. Fixed a bug that allowed users who were not members of a private conference to see the private conference's message topics listed in the Today's Messages list.
6. Fixed the entry for changing "anonymous" in the Messages section of the language.ini file.
7. Fixed a bug connected to the Previous link in the conferences list that sometimes caused the database error: "There is already an object named '#WBPrevTemp' in the database."
8. Fixed the Max Topics control in System Settings on the Site Management menu, which sometimes caused the database error "Invalid column name 'TreeLen'".
9. Search now allows you to enter the % symbol in the Search for field.
10. Fixed email notification, which was not always notifying user of new messages.
11. Fixed a bug that caused an incorrect message count for conferences A and B after messages were moved from A to B and a reply to a moved message was sent via a newsreader.
12. The list of chat rooms is now sorted in the same order as the conferences in the conferences list.
13. The help link on the User Profile page now works.
14. Fixed three functions that reported an "out of range" error when dates were entered in international format.
15. Fixed a bug that caused the message count to sometimes appear incorrectly when there were unverified messages.
16. Fixed two bugs resulting from a space in the WebBoard pathname. In one, creating a conference returned an error, although the conference was actually created. In the other, an error prevented reindexing the conferences.
17. When using JavaScript chat, chat rooms for private conferences no longer appear to users who are not members of that conference.
18. Fixed the WebBoard Open Scripting Request.IP property so that it returns the proper information with an external server.
19. Files uploaded as message attachments to conferences on no-auth boards now appear to users.
20. Fixed a bug that resulted in incorrect URLs on boardadded.html, boardlist.html, messagesearched.html, and msgtoday.html when using an external server.
21. The delete inactive users function under System Settings on the Site Management form views negative numbers as positive (to prevent accidental deletion of all users).
22. On boards using login names, the full username no longer appears in the address book list when you post a message.
23. Fixed bugs that affected viewing the results of a search by first letter of last name when selecting users for a board or conference, selecting moderators, managers, or administrators, and adding users to an address book.
24. Fixed a problem that caused the Bottom button in the New Messages conferences list not to function properly.
25. Changed the limit for JavaScript chat messages to 180 characters on create.html and in the database.
26. Fixed the date range search feature so it works correctly when the operating system uses international date formats. The suggested date format shown on the search messages page works for most locales, but not all. If it is not correct for yours, edit msgsearch.html and change the suggested date to a format that works.
27. Fixed a bug in JavaScript chat that sometimes caused the chat session to clear the chat dialog prematurely.
28. Updated CRlink.dll to fix some problems in ConferenceRoom, including the exception error when running on multiprocessor computers.
29. Fixed the User.newAttnMssg property in Open Scripting so that it sends the number of new attention messages (it was sending the total number of new messages).
30. Fixed a problem that sometimes caused users on no-auth boards to receive a Guest Restriction error when attempting to post.
31. Fixed a bug where after archiving or deleting messages, remaining messages sometimes appeared in duplicate threads.
32. Fixed a bug where changes to or deletions of ConferenceRoom channel names were not reflected in the chat rooms list. Channels that are renamed or deleted remain alive until all active users leave; then the channel disappears.
33. Fixed a bug that caused a 500 Server Error when refreshing the Chat Rooms window in JavaScript chat on an installation using an external server. A hidden field was added to rooms.html.
34. Fixed the list of JavaScript chat rooms that appears when you click Chat in the WebBoard menubar so that it correctly displays the number of active users in each room.

Changes to the NNTP Server in version 4.1

1. Changed the NNTP server so it does not stop running if a user tries to post to a newsgroup that no longer exists or has been renamed.
2. Fixed a problem that caused some newsreaders to report the number of messages from a conference newsgroup, but fail to retrieve the message headers.
3. When the WebBoard NNTP server receives the xtest command, it now returns a 500 unrecognized command error; previously, the server stopped responding after receiving the command.
4. Fixed bug that caused the news server and WebBoard to fail on a multi-processor system.
5. WBNews.exe no longer quits if a message is posted with an attached file that exceeds the size limit set for the conference. The message is posted but the attachment is rejected. However, there is no warning message for the user, so you may want to warn those who participate via newsreader that oversized attachments will be rejected without notification.
6. MIME encoding and decoding now requires little or no extra memory and does not leak.
7. Corrected the date format in message headers.
8. Improved compatibility with newsreaders.
9. No longer adds an extra carriage return after message headers.
10. The NNTP server now accepts usernames containing spaces.

Changes to external server support in version 4.1

1. Downloads via an external server now work correctly when the filename contains a space.

Initial Product Release Notes

1. The default email hour is now 1:00 a.m. If you upgraded from a previous version of WebBoard and had changed the email hour, that time is maintained and is not moved to 1:00 a.m.
2. The ConferenceRoom administration pages (available through the Manage ConferenceRoom link on the Administrators menu) require an administrator to provide a username and password. Before ConferenceRoom will recognize a valid WebBoard administrator's username and password, that user must have entered a WebBoard ConferenceRoom chat room.
3. WebBoard now allows you to move conferences between boards. However, WebBoard does not support moving conferences to or from no-auth boards.
4. WebBoard now lets you send bulk email messages to various groups of WebBoard users. However, WebBoard does not support sending bulk email on no-auth boards.
5. Known Issue: WebBoard's newsreader capability does not currently support sending messages to specific users' attention.
6. Known Issue: If a user downloads messages to a newsreader and then replies to a message that has since been moved to a new conference, the reply message name appears in the correct (new) conference, but the reply message body is not included. Also, the message counts in both the old and new conferences may be incorrect. For instructions to recover the message bodies and reattach them to the message names, see the WebBoard Knowledge Base at http://webboard.oreilly.com.

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