# View First Unread



## Homeless by Choice (Apr 15, 2016)

I am Subscribed to several threads. I get email notices like I asked for. When I click on some of them I get a screen as shown in the attachment with the "View First Unread". On others, I don't and therefore I need to search out the last read comment. I would like to get the "View First Unread" option all the time. How do I do that?

Thank you,
LeRoy


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## Aminnich (Nov 17, 2014)

Hey thats my layout thread! Thanks for reading 

I see that on my the threads I looks at, im not subscribed to any of them, but I get emails from threads I posted on. 

this being said, I usually respond so quickly because I always have my email open, and when I see the "1" next to inbox, I can quickly check it. 

I dont know if that helps you


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## Shdwdrgn (Dec 23, 2014)

I was actually discussing this problem in another thread recently. I *think* what it comes down to is when you click the link in the email to view a new post, the forum resets your pointer for *all* threads to the current time.

So for example lets say you get a notice for a new post in one thread, and a couple hours later you get a notice for posts in another thread. If you follow the link from the second email and read those messages, then go back to the first email and try to check for new messages, your pointer has already been reset and the forum thinks you already read everything in this thread (since the replies in this thread are older than the replies you already viewed from the thread in the second email). Hope that makes sense?


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## gunrunnerjohn (Nov 10, 2010)

That's not true, I use the email link all the time, and when I come to the forum, I can still use the "new posts" icon







to read the posts since my last visit. However, if you exit the forum after clicking on one link two hours, then all the pointers are reset. That's a setting that can be changed in the admin panel, but it's been that way all along.


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## Shdwdrgn (Dec 23, 2014)

John, I think you're describing my normal routine there... I'll check individual posts as they come in through the day, but I generally don't sit down to read the rest of the forum until lunch time or in the evening.


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## gunrunnerjohn (Nov 10, 2010)

With that scenario, it will reset the message pointers if you're inactive for two hours. That time could be different, but there's a limit to how high the value would want to be. I'm not sure how increasing it would impact other members.

FWIW, when I first came here, the time was something like 20 minutes, a long time ago I bumped it up to two hours.

On another forum I moderated, I had the updates done manually, you could mark the forums read, but they never timed out. However, that is more compute intensive for the servers, and it's not the optimum way to run the board.


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## Homeless by Choice (Apr 15, 2016)

Shdwdrgn said:


> I was actually discussing this problem in another thread recently. I *think* what it comes down to is when you click the link in the email to view a new post, the forum resets your pointer for *all* threads to the current time.
> 
> So for example lets say you get a notice for a new post in one thread, and a couple hours later you get a notice for posts in another thread. If you follow the link from the second email and read those messages, then go back to the first email and try to check for new messages, your pointer has already been reset and the forum thinks you already read everything in this thread (since the replies in this thread are older than the replies you already viewed from the thread in the second email). Hope that makes sense?


I have my email program set up so that the most recent reply is on the top of my list. In the past, I would open my emails from "most recent to oldest". I was only getting the "View First Unread" feature infrequently.

This morning, I started with my "oldest" email link and worked towards the "newest". That method showed the "View First Unread" feature on all except three threads. Thanks for your clue. I am a Happy MTF reader.

LeRoy


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## Shdwdrgn (Dec 23, 2014)

I guess it depends on how the board views me as 'inactive'. If I open a thread from an email, I'll just close the tab again when I'm done, usually without ever visiting any other pages. So it would be a pretty typical day that I pop open threads (like I'm doing now), but not actually get to the rest of the board for a few hours.

[EDIT] Speaking of which... with all the rapid replies I'm noticing something else. The link in the emails point to '&goto=newpost" however when I click on them I keep going back to the first post in each thread despite the multiple replies over the last hour. I guess that falls right in line with what you're telling me though. This software doesn't keep a separate pointer for each thread, it just keeps a single timestamp for the user in general.


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## gunrunnerjohn (Nov 10, 2010)

I suspect it's just a single timestamp, but what I do is look at the new thread indicators. I keep a window open and click on any notification email links first, then I'll click on the New Posts link to see all the posts since my last visit. After reading a bunch, I click on the New Posts link again and I get a display like the following picture. Note that ones that I've seen or responded to don't have the "new posts" indicator.


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