Just noticed the time line on posts. Interesting. How long has it been there? Is it new or have I just been oblivious? 
What timeline is that pls?
It is not on all posts. Not on this one, but on the MYSQL post you responded to.
Showed up after this post so must be you need X (2?) number of replies before it shows.
I see it now. Never noticed it before, not even on posts in the main forum.
Can't see what it achieves though ... I find the "10 days elapsed" or "1 year 4 months 7 days 3 hours 14 minutes and 39.172465ms" elapsed 
helpful - all to easy, otherwise, to respond to a post without realising a significant gap has elapsed since the previous post. But the "timeline" ... no idea if that will be helpful.
Here's an old thread to try continuous-scrolling on (and how the TimeLine displaychanges), just in case of interest
http://forums.sqlteam.com/t/welcome-to-the-microsoft-sql-server-forums-at-sqlteam-com/8
this is interesting. I like it 
Does it serve a purpose? (a meaningful one, I mean!!)
Besides being able to scroll to a given date?
I was hoping someone who worked with the site would chime in. 
Didn;t know you could grab-and-drag ... handy, but still not sure it has a purpose.
I'm trying to think of forum sites where threads go on for so long that the feature would be useful. Perhaps Joel Spolsky has ambitions for Discourse to make a land-grab for Facebook? 
While the time-line bar looks cool and elegant, I wish the creators of the forum software would spend their time fixing the more pressing functionality problems. Two of the most common problems that I run into are:
-
Inability to format code as code. If I use the left angle bracket-slash-right angle bracket icon on the tool bar, sometimes it formats correctly, sometimes it just ignores the request as though it thinks I am a nobody and can safely be ignored. This happens about 30 percent of the time to me.
-
Unexplained errors when trying to post. I would compose a (brilliant in my opinion) reply and when I click the "Reply" button, it would popup a message to the effect "Error. Cannot post. Try later" (I am paraphrasing). Since I have a real job, I give up and move on. This happens about 10 percent of the time.
I have not been able to identify any pattern to either of these problems - whether it is the content of the post that is causing the issue, or whether the forum software just didn't like my face that day or what.
I agree.
Not really, the posting date is actually available, just in the form of x days / hours ago. Maybe more useful for a very old post. Instead of mentally calculate 53d, is when, the date is shown on the time line. But then again, does it really matter to me that i know the exact date or just a estimation of 53d is 2 months ago ? I am afraid no.
That is so 2015
... mouse over the 53d ? 
I don't use that - not enough "control" for my liking. I used to use [code] but that didn't preserve any blank lines ... so now I use
```sql
code here
```
and also (when syntax highlighting not required)
```text
content here
```
I hate the formatting on this site, with a vengeance. The number of posters who manage to format their code is close to zero, people who don't, but then have space indentation in their code, get half-and-half formatting, and any * xxx * content is likely to give them bold, along with other H1 Heading style formatting side effects.
If I try to type a < ... > object in my text it gets swallowed (I've had to deliberately escape it here), along with a number of other "formatting characters". Its fine if you know, of course, but if you just type, or Cut & Paste, then the result is just a waste of time for the people taking the trouble to post.
I cannot put any Colour / Formatting in a Code Block (to indicate a subtle change that the O/P should make) and so on. There are other restrictions with the MarkDown formatting - Using * to boldface a section only works if there is a leading, rather than trailing, space at the opening * (or something like that - whatever it is it annoys me so much I can't be arsed to test it to find out what does/not work - particularly as I'm trying to type on a stupid tablet in a hotel room!!
Only consolation is that SQLCentral's forum software is 100x worse, I don't understand why the Gurus post there, it is so tedious to use and a GRAND waste of their precious time (in fact I think it is an insult to the collection of Gurus who hang out there that it has NOT been upgraded)
I don't think I've ever had that happen. No consolation to you, but if it is limited to you, or "rare", then it may be something environmental, at your end, which could be found & fixed. No idea how you would acieve that, but my guess is that it must be something to do with the AJAX posting method.
Just in case Graz is reading this the very next post I read is a great example of the average post and how it gets mangled (stuff converted to Bole, thereby "eating" a * at least)
http://forums.sqlteam.com/t/mysql-organizing-result-sets-to-get-complete-and-unique-data/6705
Its got a Create Table, INSERT sample data, The query the O/P tried, what result data they got, and the actual data they would like. 100% perfect question.
But its completely unreadable ....
Respectfully, Kristen,
How is my post unreadable?
If you point out what you cannot understand, perhaps I can edit it to resolve the issues.
I see the post as completely straight forward.
Completely unreadable may be a little strong. But the formatting does make it hard to read.
Can you contact me directly when you have errors posting? I'd like to see if we can't address it
@Marc, the comments that @Kristen made were in no way meant to be disparaging to your posting. To the contrary, he was suggesting that the content of your post was well thought out with all the required information. But the poor formatting capabilities of the site caused the text and the code to be presented in a manner that made it hard to read.
Ha ha ! didn't know that is possible 