It has been discussed before, usually as a request/suggestion for an offline reader.
There are at least two major problems with off-line readers, and the same problems are likely to occur even if the thick client is used on-line:
Bandwidth. If someone goes online once per day, and downloads all the messages in all the forums that they are interested in that have been updated, then in all likelihood, that single person will bring the servers to a crawl for everyone else. Multiply that by the potential numbers of people who visit JavaRanch each day, and multiply that by the people who would like to have their own personal copy of all the threads in all the forums, and it just becomes unmanageable.
Timeliness. One of the great things about JavaRanch is that someone asks a question, and someone answers it. This may then result in a further question being asked and further answers.
Take it to an off-line mode, and you have a very good chance that people will be posting answers to questions that have already been answered. And answers to questions appearing long after everyone else has moved on.Those 2 problems are pretty much killers to the whole off-line reader concept.
As for your suggested benefits:
pick specific forums from a drop-down list There is already a drop-down list of forums in the bottom right hand corner of whatever forum you are in. So you can jump directly from the current forum (or even
thread) to another forum.
built in spell checking Firefox gives me that capability already. And not just for JavaRanch - for any site I go to where I need to type text into a field.
widgets to insert UBB code What would this give you over the buttons that already exist underneath the entry field?Personally I am not seeing value, but I am always willing to be convinced otherwise.
Regards, Andrew
[ June 14, 2007: Message edited by: Andrew Monkhouse ]