About the view options

The portlet gives you the ability to set a few preferences related to how posts and replies are displayed. You do this through the View Options or View/Reply Options dialog box. You have the following choics:

Under the Show label, the portal gives you the following options:

· Post and Replies

· Single Message

This option controls the view you see after clicking the subject line of a post from within the Forum Home or a similar screen.

If you choose Post and Replies, when you click on the subject line of any post, the system shows the full text of that post, as well as the full text of the first few replies.

If you choose Single Message, when you click the subject line of a post, the system will show the full text of that post only and summarize the replies in a list. Within the list, the system highlights the item whose text you are currently displaying. You can click any item in the list to display the text of that item instead of the original post.

You can have the portal display 5, 10, 15, or 20 items per page. You set this using the Messages per page drop-down list.

The default choice is 5. In this case, if you have selected Post and Replies as your Show preference, the system will show the full text of the original post and up to four replies on a single page. If you have selected Single Message as your Show preference, the system will show the original post you selected and then list a maximum of four replies on each page. In both cases, you can page backward or forward to see additional items.

Under the Sort label, the portlet gives two options: Chronological and Discussion.

If you choose Chronological, then each time you display a post, its replies will be listed in chronological order, and all items will be flush left, regardless of whether they are replies to the original post or replies to other replies.

The exact display will depend on your Show preference -- the following figure illustrates how the Chronological choice would look using if you have chosen the Single Message Show choice.

If you choose Discussion, then each time you display a post, each reply will be shown after the item that it is replying to, regardless of when it was submitted, and it will be indented slightly to indicate that it is a reply.