Render Page with Age information

I'm trying to come up with a way to indicate the amount of time that's passed since a page was edited, preferably in a more immediately visual way that the current text string. Something like the page turning grey as it got older, or a visual image at the top that got swapped out with a different one as time passed. I'm wondering if this is best done with templates or some kind of plug-in. I've written extensions for other software before, but have little idea how Twiki works on its backend, so any advice here would be appreciated.

-- ShaneLiesegang - 17 Jun 2006

I've used SpreadSheetPlugin to display images based on dates, though those were dates in a form. It works something like:

%<nop>CALC{$SET(weekold, $TIMEADD($TIME(), -7, day))}% 
%<nop>SEARCH{"^NieuwsBericht" scope="all" regex="on" nosearch="on" nosummary="on" nototal="on" reverse="on" order="created"
format="$percntCALC{$IF($TIME($date) < $GET(weekold) , <nop> , $percntICON{led-green}$percnt}$percnt"}%

This displayes %ICON{led-green}% only if topics are less then a week old. I'm not sure if you can access the time the topic was created, and i'm also not sure if this is the best way to go.

-- JosMaccabiani - 17 Jun 2006

It would be good to be able to do this with gradient colors. For example, hot fresh topics first display as green, and if not edited, start turning towards light gray. Or something. I guess you could use some javascripting to calculate the color based on the returned age? (Dont ask me how, I just got started with javascript)

-- MikkoLaakso - 11 Mar 2007

Yes, a "freshness stamp" would be handy on each page. See also : TimeSincePlugin

-- KeithHelfrich - 11 Mar 2007

How about calculating the time in days since last edit and mapping the background page color to some shade of yellow (since paper gets yellower as it gets older). CSS should make it easy to chage the background color right?

-- JohnRouillard - 11 Mar 2007

Yes, that can be done with some SpreadSheetPlugin magic and style sheets. Example:

• Age factor: 10 (determines the "speed" of aging; factor x 5 is time for max color; here set to 10 x 5 = 50 sec to see effect)
• Current epoc time: 1771534694
• Topic epoc time: 1174174557 (format 2007/03/17 - 23:35:57 GMT)
• Time diff: 597360137
• Factor: 59736013
• Cap: 5
• Color: #FFFFAF

Test:

-- PeterThoeny - 12 Mar 2007

Another idea I've had, somewhat related, is AutoTwistingComments. Wouldn't it be nice, for example, to auto-twist older comments using the TwistyPlugin and color the text of the twisty container based on the age (> 1 year, >6 mo > 3 mo)

-- KeithHelfrich - 17 Mar 2007