As many of you know by now, America's Debate will be undergoing a major upgrade relatively soon. With this upgrade comes a lot of new and enhanced features, a lot of optimizations, and a complete redesign of the entire site.

I've put together a little "Forum Feature Preview" that hilights some of the key enhancements that you can expect once the upgrade has been completed. Enjoy!

Forum Feature Preview

• Relative dates
  When dates from the last 48 hours are listed on the forum, they will be referenced as "Today" or "Yesterday". This makes it easier to find current topics and posts, and makes the forum easier to read in general.
  
  
• Online forum users shows who is posting a new topic.
  When viewing a specific forum-- General Political Debate for example-- there is currently a list of other members who are viewing the same forum. After the upgrade is complete, members who are starting new topics will be hilighted in the list.
  
  
• Online topics users shows who is replying to the topic
  When viewing a specific topic-- here for example-- there is currently a list of other members who are viewing the same topic. After the upgrade is complete, members who are replying to the topic will be hilighted in the list.
  
  
• Collapsible categories and statistics
  If you never find yourself debating in a specific category-- Social Issues for example-- you will have the option to "collapse" that category from view on the forum index page with one click.
  
  
• Online/Offline user indicators
  Each member will have an Online/Offline Indicator in their profile, and under their avatar in posts. The icon will change automatically when a member is online at America's Debate.
  
  
• Multi-Quote
  If you've ever tried to use the quote feature on more than one post at a time, you've probably found it to be quite difficult. There's a lot of cutting-and-pasting involved. After the upgrade, though, it will be incredibly easy to quote multiple posts at once. Each post will have a little "Quote+" button next to it. If you plan on quoting that post, you click the button. You can quote as many posts as you want from as many topics as you want, and the next time you hit "Add Reply," all of the posts you selected will be quoted in the reply box-- ready to go! And to top it off, each quotation box will automatically have a link back to the original post being quoted!
  
  
• Linear-Plus view mode
  As everyone knows, staying on-topic is the name of the game here. But when you're 15 pages into a topic, it can be difficult to remember the exact topic to debate. When the upgrade is complete, the first post in each topic will automatically appear at the top of subsequent pages. There will also be an optional Threaded View mode and the regular Standard View mode.
  
  
• Find all members topics feature
  Right now, there is a link in everyone's profile that says Find member's posts. It pulls every post a member has ever submitted. After the upgrade, there will be a new link added that says Find member's topics which will return every topic that the member has started.
  
  
• Improved basic Mozilla editor
  If you use Mozilla FireFox, you have probably found that BBCode (bold, italics, etc.) and emoticons are inserted at the end of your post, not where your cursor is positioned. This will be fixed.