Sweet, thanks jase! Works just like it's supposed to, now. \ o /
Aesthetically, I'm down with the new layout. The four columns give it a balance that it didn't have when there were just two, while providing the information that the majority of people need & obscuring what most people didn't - so it's win-win.
I wouldn't argue with the last login field being something like 'Today', 'This week', 'This month', 'Months ago' for players if you really wanted to go there, but it's probably not necessary now that PMs trip logins. (I'll admit that I *do* wish that PMs could trip logins without tripping last post so that it could be done more surreptitiously - so that GMs could just have all their characters in a PM with each other without it looking like they were all in a PM with each other - but I feel those two things are clearly just inextricably linked with regards to GM-controlled characters, so I'll take what I can get! An obvious PM post that trips login is waaaaay better than a hidden PM post that doesn't.) I do think that keeping the 'Today' is going to be important for people who want to know if someone else has seen a recent post, if you do decide to obfuscate last login dates more.
quote:
Apparently we need to go to great length to hide GM controlled PCs.
Ironically, what necessitated the need for being able to trip last login for GM-controlled PCs with posts of any kind is the first layer of hiding them! =)
Years ago, GM-controlled PCs logged in whenever the GM logged in, then the code started making that last login appear random from the player side, while the GM still saw their characters all log in at the same time*. Which meant that it was necessary to force-update the last login to 'Today' if those characters made a post, because otherwise it looks like a bizarro glitch from the player side and the GM wouldn't have had any idea.
Truthfully, you could do away with that original obfuscation entirely, and it would solve the issue just as much because then GM-controlled characters would just look like active players, instead of needing a way to trip logins for characters that look (to other players) like they've taken a weeks'/months' long powder. =)
* - this is still weird, and for GMs that don't have a friend/spouse/etc that play in their games with them that know their characters, they tend to have no idea that their characters have wonky login times that probably should be tripped so that they don't look inactive.