README

Flarum 2 tells a returning reader what is new. It says nothing about what moved — a post they read last week that has since been rewritten looks exactly like one they have already read. Since is the missing half.

What it looks like

Two things, both quiet:

A strip in the discussion sidebar — who changed what, and when. Click a line to jump to that post.
A mark on each post that changed after this reader had already read it.

The post below them in that shot was posted by someone else and never edited, so it carries no mark. Neither does a post edited before the reader's last visit — they saw the edit; it is not news.

Why this needs saying

An edit is the one change Flarum's unread machinery cannot show you. New posts move the unread marker. Edits do not move anything: the post keeps its place in the thread, its timestamp stays where it was, and core's "Edited" label says only that it was edited — not that it happened behind your back, while you were away, after you had read and acted on the old wording.

In a thread that plans something — a date, a price, a rule, a decision — that is the difference between reading the thread and knowing what it says.

How it works

Entirely in the browser, from data the page already has.

Piece	What it does
`baseline.js`	snapshots `lastReadAt` and `lastReadPostNumber` the first time anything asks
`editedSinceRead()`	a post counts if it is at or before the read mark and was edited after the read time
`ChangedStrip`	the sidebar strip, dismissable, collapsed past three

No tables, no settings, no backend: the extension ships PHP only to register its assets and locale.

Themes

The strip is one panel in the discussion sidebar, and a panel that ignores the theme around it looks bolted on. On a forum running Bespoke, the strip takes that theme document's own surface, border, radius, elevation, density and heading font — including a theme the owner has customised, since a customised Bespoke is a different set of token values under the same names.

That styling is gated on the theme actually running, not on its variables being present: Bespoke publishes its :root block server-side on every request, so under Wardrobe a member reading in a different theme is still sent Bespoke's variables. Since keys off flarum.extensions instead, which holds only what is in the bundle that page is running.

The snapshot is the whole trick. Flarum PATCHes your read state as you scroll, which overwrites the very attributes this compares against — so reading the discussion destroys the record of what you had already read. Since captures the arriving values once per page load and then leaves them alone. A refresh legitimately loses the strip: you have now read those posts, and they are not news a second time.

Both halves of the test matter. editedAt on its own would flag every edited post in the thread, including ones edited long before the reader ever arrived. The post number is what narrows it to what they actually saw.

What it does not do

Posts in the loaded stream only. No extra requests: if a changed post is a hundred replies further down and not loaded yet, it is not in the strip.
Signed-in members who have read the discussion before. For everyone else the whole thread is new, which core's own unread divider already says better.
What changed is not shown. This says a post moved and takes you to it; it is not a diff viewer.

Installation

composer require ernestdefoe/since

Nothing to configure — enable it and it works.

Licence

MIT

ernestdefoe / since

Package info

Security

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