>>I'd like to have independent counts of new nessages by forum too.
>>
>>Just thinking out loud here... I visualize that a number beside each forum header in the upper frame would go a long way on this.
>>
>>This issue does bring up a **potential** problem (I'll have to play and see if it is a real issue) that the individual forums' 'new messages' count might be reset to zero EVEN IF I CHOOSE NOT TO EXPAND A FORUM **THIS** TIME.
>>In other words, when I login to UT I sure hope that messages in all forms are NOT considered as viewed (possibly not 'read') if I do not expand that forum's content.
>>
>>UPDATE: I just closed UT seeing that there were messages (UNexpanded) in my selected .NET and VB forums. Then I logged back in and these forums had DISAPPEARED in the upper frame INDICATING THAT IT ASSUMED I HAD VIEWED THEM!!! I hadn't, and don't think they should have disappeared on me.
>
>Yes, as nothing has been done yet in regards to that. Before doing something, I am collecting data from members and need some more analysis. So far, it seems we are heading towards a NNTP approach where an unread item remains unread as long as a click is not done on it. The ability to mark all as read would also be applicable. Basically, Outlook has it as well. This, per user, saved on the server, would probably be the best approach. I don't know yet the impact on the process time for each user when reading those messages.

I'm now seeing some behaviour which is different from before. I'm mentioning it here because it looks like it's the "flip side" of Jim's earlier comment.

At the moment, the only forum I have specified for automatic expansion is the VFP forum. During my current session the total number of new messages went up to 14. I hit the "refresh" button at the top, which showed 2 new messages (expanded) in VFP, 11 in Chatter and 1 in .NET (the latter both collapsed). I expanded both Chatter and .NET and looked at those messages as well.

When I hit the "Refresh" button again, it now shows 12 new messages rather than 0. The 11 Chatter messages and 1 .NET message are not removed. As time goes by I think this number is going to keep increasing since there seems to be no way to reset it.

As I said earlier, this is probably the flip side of Jim's earlier comments. It looks like another setup flag may be required, something like "automatically mark messages as READ in collapsed forums". This could potentially be put against individual forums, in the Forums setup page.