Is there a way to show the unread count within a topic? It seems that we only see the number of replies in a topic, but not any indication of how many of those replies I’ve read. I know the system keeps track because if I enter a topic that I’ve partially read, it takes me to where I left off.
As it is now, if I read a topic but there are new replies, or if I only made it partway through, I don’t see anything to call it to my attention.
Yes it will track unread posts in topics you are actively participating in or have spent more than 4 minutes reading. When new replies are posted it will highlight these topics as Unread and show the count of new unread posts. Hopefully you should see this on this topic after I post this reply.
I am actually seeing an example of this in my sidebar right now…
This system won’t know what you’ve read on the old boards however so this will only work going forward. One of the reasons we are leaving the old boards up for a period of time is so that users can catch up on reading topics they were following on the old system.
The problem with that is that i don’t necessarily want to track a topic just because I read it. Unless there’s a better mechanism for this, I want to use “tracking” to filter topics/categories to my specific interests.
But when I’m browsing around anywhere on the site, I should be able to tell how much of a topic I’ve read without needing to click on it.
Perhaps related: what does the little blue dot at the end of the topic title indicate? I haven’t been able to figure that out.
This is exactly why the system tracks posts you’ve spent more than 4 minutes reading.
If you want to untrack any given topic then you can just click the bell icon on the topic page:
Just click Normal and you won’t be tracking it anymore
@Softie here’s an example of a tracked topic showing up in a list of topics with 1 new unread reply:
The blue 1 next to the title indicates an unread reply and if I click the post it will take me to the latest unread reply.
Ok, that looks good. I’m using my phone right now so I’m not sure if it will be different on a desktop, but I think what I’m learning is that “Tracked” means different things for categories and topics.
It appears that when I click Tracked in the sidebar, I see all posts from categories I’ve tracked. (This is what I want.) I assumed that I would also see topics I’ve tracked, regardless of category. (This is why I didn’t want to track every topic I open.) It appears I was wrong and I do NOT see tracked topics when selecting “Tracked” in the sidebar if they are not in a tracked category.
If the above is correct, then I’m satisfied I can achieve what I want.
Edit: I don’t know if that’s really correct, even though it seems to be what I observe, since when you hover it says “All tracked topics”. But anyway, there’s another indicator that will work for me. I had believed that a topic title would become gray if I had opened it. But in fact, it becomes gray when you have read all the way to the end. That is exactly what I wanted to know. As long as a topic goes from gray back to black when it has new activity, then I’m satisfied.
Yes, tracked topics are not going to be on the sidebar, just tags and categories (and maybe users - I need to check that). And any new activity will reset the topic from gray to black to indicate there is a new reply.
It takes more time to adapt on the mobile than a desktop but the system does have a mobile view which is nice (I toggle it back and forth on my iPad to test things out.)
