Display "?" regarding "Hot Topics"

When you search for new posts, it will list the ones that have new posts since your last visit AND any topics that have been posted to in the last day regardless of if you have read them or not (they are new to the board, but you may have read the posts already). The new color (pink) means that there are posts in that topic that you have not read yet (so you know the difference between topics that have newly posted unread posts (flashing pink) and those topics that have been posted to recently.

If you have not read the posts, it would make sense to keep them flashing pink - the board thinks you haven't seen the posts yet and justly so, you haven't. The older method (while you may have liked it), made it so that a screen refresh or accidental closure of a browser window made all the new posts disappear (not cool). If you are not interested in the topic I would suggest just setting your preferences in User Control Panel, Board Preferences, Edit Display Options, Display topics from previous days to a set number of days and just ignoring the topics you are uninterested in until the time has elapsed, then they will not show up in your new posts area. Of course, this could mess things up, so I would personally just click the topic title and then hit back when it's loaded. I read everything, so I guess if you only follow certain topics, this could be annoying.

As far as being a posse member, I like it this way. I can't seem to change anything board wide on my end to help you out - but perhaps Jeff or Thomas have extra options?

Yeah, it's hard to explain I guess if you've never read boards in this fashion... I don't know how better to explain it (textually) other than to repeat it in a different fashion and with more detail.

When you first log in to the site you see a list of ALL of the "TOPICS", right? Well you will notice that any TOPICS which contain THREADS that you have not yet read are sort of "highlighted" (in this version the icon is READ vice BLACK... in the old version I forget already but I think they were orange vice black). This lets you know that that TOPIC contains something you haven't seen yet. But some TOPICS just don't interest me so I don't read them very often (for example, "Edged Weapons"). So, what I do, is I go down the list MIDDLE-clicking on each HIGHLIGHTED TOPIC that I'm interested in. This opens them up in other TABS (I use FF) and once I go all the way down the list I close the main tab (thus skipping the TOPICS I don't want to read)... now, on each TOPIC-tab there is a list of THREADS... new ones are HIGHLIGHTED in the same fashion as before. And I do the same thing... I middle-click on threads I'm interested in and just pass over the ones I'm not. Then I close that page.

What's nice, doing it that fasion, is that on the old board when I would return if no NEW posts had been made to, say, "Edged Weapons" but I hadn't actually READ that TOPIC previously, it still will no longer be HIGHLIGHTED. It will only highlight if something changed since my LAST visit. The new board doesn't do that, it stays highlighted until I actually go into the topic and open up each updated thread.

HOWEVER, just clicking on "view all new messages" is just as simple and seemingly even easier; so now I don't care that my old method doesn't work... I just need to modify my habit, that's all.

Hope that makes sense, but it probably doesn't matter much if it doesn't.

I guess what I would like to see, though, is a feature that allowed me to be sent automatically to the "view new messages" page upon logging on... I wonder if that's an option on this new board???