Searching Talk4TV

Along the top of each Talk4TV page you'll see the menu bar. There's also another one at the bottom of the page so you won't have to scroll.

The furthest menu item to the right, the down arrow, is a quick jump to the bottom on the page. At the bottom, the menu bar has an up arrow to bring you back.

Next to the arrow is You Said -- a link to retrieve all of your posts from the most recent, in chronological order. The You Said link also will retrieve any drafts that you have stored so you can edit them.

You Said is just a pre-set search that looks for your posts. Another useful pre-set search at the top right of the Talk4TV Index page, View Posts Since Last Visit. The yellow folders show the forums and topics that have new material since your last visit, and the latest post in each. By the way, the "time of last visit" is based on when your previous session was started, and this might not always be 100% accurate.

Pre-made searches are nice and quick, but the Talk4TV Search tool, under the Search link on the menu bar, can help you find anything! The shot below shows the Search interface. It gives to the power to search for a very specific post, or the posts on a certain day, by a certain member, or that contain certain words in either the body or the topic. Note that some historical posts won't be there if they were removed from the active database as they got old.

Customizing Your Talk4TV Interface

If you're on a TV platform, these example screens probably look a lot like the ones you see -- a dark blue background, with light type. But if you're on a PC, you're probably thinking "but I'm looking at something different, on a white background!"

Actually, you can have it whichever way you like best, simply by selecting the Settings link from the bottom menu. That brings you to a personalization page where, currently, you can select either Dark or Bright as your color theme. We have found that dark tends to work better on TV and bright on a PC, but it's up to you, and you can change back and forth whenever you like.

The Settings page also allows you to localize your timezone. While Talk4TV supports time zones all over the world (yes, we have an active member in Europe, one in Iceland, and one in Korea), you'll probably want to choose one of these.

Talking to Your Fellow Posters

As you post back and forth with your fellow Games4TV members, the time may come where you'd like to talk to a member privately. It might be a "thank you," or a follow-up on something they mentioned, or you might even like to exchange email addresses with a new friend.

When a member posts, you'll see the Profile and Message buttons under their Games4TV ID. The Profiles aren't up yet, but every active Talk4TV member has a Private Messenger, and you can send them a message simply by clicking the button.