Tom_K

Is there a plugin that could bring this feature back? Let's say a user is searching for something on my community and the search results take him to page 50 of 100 of a topic. There are unread posts in that topic on page 89. How does the user even realize there are unread posts?

Exactly. It is strange to have a button open a new page where you have comments since we know it can be done like Pages comments.

The only drawback regarding the discussion topic is that it is not visible when you visit the advert. I wish it would be like Pages articles where comments from the discussion topic are also visible on the article page and you can comment directly on the article page or in this case on the advert page. That would make Classifieds perfect.

IPS4 has some areas that really need a little TLC from the devs. While the recent new features in 4.1.17 are great, I believe there are bigger issue to be resolved first. This being one of them.

Exactly. Guess I won't get any IPS feedback on this.

There used to be a "go to first unread post" link within a topic. Let's say there's a topic with 5 pages and I read the topic when it was two and a half pages long. When I see the topic I click its title which brings me to the first page. I have no link to go to the first unread post within that topic. It makes sense to show the user there are unread posts especially if he came to the topic from search results pointing to page 1 which he has already read. Why was the link removed?

@Adriano Faria I actually tried that same filter but I see you used the condensed view and that looks much cleaner. But this would be useful if it could be added as a permanent link for all users not just as a personal AS. Can that be done (even the condensed view setting)? I think I understand what IPS wanted to do with the AS but it's still very rough around the edges. Trying to display all the activities (Board, Blogs, Gallery etc.) on one page is mission impossible. Having tabs or a similar solution would enable different views for different content types. Or maybe just group the activities by content type. And if the user wants to see all the new topics or all the new images added, expand that section.

@Lindy since you asked, I would like to know how I can get a list of topics with new (unread posts). When I come to visit the board, I want to know which topics have new replies since my last visit. I don't care for individual posts and I don't understand why I should even see each specific post that has been made. Busy boards can have 1.000+ new posts each day. Do you really expect a visitor that comes back to the board 24 hours later to go through an endless stream of individual posts to see what is new? What would you suggest to that user to stop complaining about the loss of overview he had with VNC?

I've read a lot of topics criticising the activity stream feature and I find it utterly unuserfriendly as well. What was the logic behind this change? It seems like a case where someone was trying to fix something that already worked and made it worse. Like Microsoft and the whole Windows 8 debacle. Activity stream may be useful for a low traffic board and works on Facebook where you only get certain "posts" in your stream. But what is the point of having an activity stream on a high traffic board? It's so clumsy at what it should be doing. Instead of letting you know which topics have new posts so you can get up to date, you face an endless stream of new posts (often from one and the same topic). Basically what I'm asking si how the h**** should I be using this feature to help me browse the board? It obviously isn't doing its job properly but I'll allow the possibility that I'm just not using it as it was intended. Can anyone help me understand this thing better? And why we can't simlpy have a choice of both (the old new content list and activity stream)? This way it just seems it was forced onto users.

+1 vB 3.x thread read/unread marking system is light years better.