>>Not being a web expert I have no idea what would be involved, but one thing I think would be helpfull is to get the threads collapsed at first and expand the ones I want. That way if there is a is fox dead thread I wouldn't even know how many messages there were.
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>There would be a couple of ways to do this, each with advantages-
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>The first way would be similar to the message board on West-wind, where expanding actually makes another hit on the server. This would probably be the easiest to program for, but would create a BUNCH of web traffic, as people click and click just to get the complete list of messages.
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>The second, and the best for both bandwidth and usability (but very complex to program for) would be for the threads to expand or collapse on the client using DHTML (Sort of like the menus on Microsoft's web site).
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>The slickest way to handle this would be for the messages to come over as XML, and the browser can apply an XSL stylesheet to dynamically expand or collapse the thread as we wish. This way, we could potentially each create our own stylesheet that would shape the thread visually the way that we want it. (Sound familiar, Ed?). This last suggestion would take a heck of a lot of planning, and considerable resources to develop and implement, but the UT would be one of the first (of hopefully many) online forums to implement it. I know several people who wouldn't mind volunteering time and expertise to make it happen (myself included).

Actually, making the data available as XML would allow the -user- to construct whatever filters (s)he likes! I like this idea more and more all the time...