Forum navigation features

[daal]

Apparently I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, because when looking for new posts that I'm interested in reading, I often end up reading threads with no new posts, or I find I've missed a whole series of new posts, or I spend too much time just digging about. I would appreciate an overview of the forum navigation features. Here are some things I would like to know:

1. What is an "active topic?"

2. When clicking for example "View new posts" a page appears with various symbols on the left. On the far left is something like a circle with a page in it. Sometimes the little page-like thingy is white, sometimes yellow, sometimes it is moving. What does this indicate?

3. On a list of posts such as mentioned in question 2, some posts are dark blue and some are light blue. What determines this?

4. Some folks have spoken of a feature called "mark posts as read." How does this work?

Thanks.

[xed_over]

This is by no means official

1. What is an "active topic?"

a topic that is read by a lot of other people

2. When clicking for example "View new posts" a page appears with various symbols on the left. On the far left is something like a circle with a page in it. Sometimes the little page-like thingy is white, sometimes yellow, sometimes it is moving. What does this indicate?

white - you've already read everything there
yellow (or orange) - there are new posts that you haven't read
moving - active topic (see #1)

3. On a list of posts such as mentioned in question 2, some posts are dark blue and some are light blue. What determines this?

good question... don't know

4. Some folks have spoken of a feature called "mark posts as read." How does this work?

if you view forum subgroups as a whole (instead of all the latest new posts), then you may see several "orange/yellow" topics that you haven't read yet. If so, then there should be a link to "mark topics read" that will flip them from yellow/orange to white

if they are all white already, then the link won't be there.

[Phelan]

3. On a list of posts such as mentioned in question 2, some posts are dark blue and some are light blue. What determines this?

good question... don't know

Links you've clicked vs links you haven't clicked, maybe?

[ChradH]

This is extremely useful. I had to ask for it, too...

[daal]

Thanks guys, the fog is lifting.