Highlighted topics

Hi, I've just noticed cos I replied to one post that I lost all the previously highlighted (not looked at) threads. Why is this?

I know I haven't looked at these threads which were highlighed before I replied to one particular thread. Any ideas please!

cheers

 

If you go to "quick links" you can look a "todays posts".

Its better than "new posts" as it doesn't alter when you post a message.
They are all still there.

 

The system tries to decide when you last visited, and show you what is "new" since then. I reckon it does that based on the last time you looked at something, and you then not viewing any pages for a while - at which point it decides that you have viewed everything up to the last page-view you had.

If I had written the forum software I wouldn't have done it that way!

Under "Quick Links" there is "Mark forums read" - that marks everything read as of the time time you press the button. So something posted since you clicked to view that page, and you then clicking on "Mark forums read" is also marked read. I think much better would be "Mark forums read as of the time that you asked for this page" - then anything that came in just after (or a lot later if its taken you 5 minutes to answer the phone, make a cuppa, and read the page!! before you press the button).

I'm a geek, so my method may not suit everyone, but I use "New posts" or "Quick links : Today's posts", and scroll to the bottom, and then proceed to any additional pages, one by one, until I get to the end. I then Right Click the icon (to left of the Subject) and use Open In New Tab. (I use FireFox and that can be set to NOT switch to the new tab automatically). I move up the list doing this on any topic I am interested in, and I also look out for the icon (which tells me I have replied in that thread / topic).

When I get to the top of the page I have normally opened 3 or 4 TABs, so I then click on them to read them, reply if I want to, then close each TAB. When I've done that I'm back at the "New posts" page. If I am on page 2, or later, I press BACK to get to the earlier page, work my way up from the bottom, and so on until I get to the top of Page 1.

This has a side-benefit that the 5 or 10 seconds to load a page is done "in background" whilst I am choosing each thread that I want to read, so I don;t have to wait for each page to load.

Now, its entirely possible that new messages have been posted, so I do NOT press "Quick links : Mark forums read" as that will mark everything as of NOW, and not as of the time that page was displayed. I make a note of the time of the post at the top of the page, use "Quick links : Today's post" and then scroll down to the post more recently after the time I noted. I work my way back to the top again ... if I spent 30 minutes, the first time, reading / replying to posts there will only be a few new ones in that time, so I'm done pretty quickly. Repeat if necessary.

Whatever I do, the very lsast thing I do is a "Quick links : Today's post" and make sure there are no new posts that I am interested in. If I walk away from my computer the system will treat that time / page as the point to mark the messages as "Read".

Hope that makes sense! sorry its so convoluted; its a ssystem I use on a number of Forums using different software, and it works, for me, fairly generically.