It's been suggested to have a count of new items next to each tab on the view new content screen, so users would know to click on those and not the ones that don't have a count, or have a count of 0. This has been shot down due to the resource limitations it would incur, but what if you just used the itemMarking class to pull the last read item and compare that to the last updated item in the app (could be cached as well) and if it's newer then simply put 'NEW' next to the tab, rather than a count. That way users at least know there's some new content to see, and it's not nearly as resource intensive (might not even involve any additional queries) as counting new content items.

Seconded!

It sounds like a good idea to me, we can always experiment with it and see how it works. The most obvious downside is probably that it would be inconsistent with the other search areas: Active Content, My Content, and of course normal search, could potentially be confusing to have VNC be the only one with that feature.

Interesting.

We'd need to manually load the markers as it only stores the current apps in memory but that's just a few queries. I'll mull it over.

The discontinuity with the other search options I can handle and I think the improved feature would benefit the users.

In the interim is there any way of making 'View New Content' always default to landing on the Forums tab?

I forgot about this one :P

I'm still for it -- and the discontinuity wouldn't be too bad IMO, since having "NEW" or similar next to to tabs on View "New" Content wouldn't be unexpected, and it's not like the average forum user knows that VNC is powered by the same search they use.

So do you think this could be a Mod, or a new feature in a 3.1 update?

Unsure at this point.

We'll need to test. We wouldn't want to add a feature that turns out unstable and then have to remove it and/or spend a deal of time rewriting it.

Fingers are firmly crossed! :)