Originally Posted by dan at WebFlyer
I haven't had that problem myself, either here or on other vBB boards I frequent. When I go to a particular thread that I haven't been to in a while, even if I've been browsing all day on other forums/threads, I still get the correct "newest" post from the last time I visited that thread.
I dunno really. I remember thinking at first it was working pretty well, but now it seems less likely to hold the unread properly. I have no idea why that would be. (Why it would change, I mean. That part could be my imagination I guess, but I seem to remember it working better at first.) My usual browser is Safari, and I don't have any other vBBs that I frequent to compare it to. (The two other boards I read daily use phpBB and WebCrossing. A third I visit fairly often uses Invision. I could say I like variety in my BB systems
but it's really just luck of the draw.)
Even now, as I read tonight, many unread threads are already no longer marked that way. I happened to read OMNI first tonight. Those were mostly marked, though when I got to Page 3 (viewing newest first) they were showing read already (even though I haven't been here since last night). Soon as I clicked over into some other boards like this one, only the threads new in the last hour or so are marked unread. I have subscribed to these forums, but these are not individual thread subscriptions.
It's not a big problem for me or anything. I can remember roughly when my last visit was and find what is new with no problem. But as soon as the system thinks these threads are read, there's not even a link to go to first unread post. I don't even use those links anyway (don't trust them), but I do like seeing the highlighted threads.
In my experience no board system can 100% do this properly except for WebCrossing. WebCrossing tracks right down to the post what you've read or not and always remembers even if you stop in the middle of a thread, quit out of the browser and log in from a different computer later. phpBB will show me unread threads and mark each one off as I read it, but if it sits too long it will time out, at which point everything will be marked read when I come back. If I quit browser with phpBB everything will get marked read. Essentially what your vBB setup is doing right now is the same as I just said for phpBB, except the time at which it will consider everything read is much shorter. And I could have sworn it wasn't that way originally. I remember being impressed at its read vs unread remembering capability.