I was being rather tongue-in-cheek. In one post you say you can recall a whole bunch of threads where the last post you saw was #3, you haven't visited since, and now there are 12 posts. In another post, you say you can't even begin to recall what you visited a few days ago, so there is the possibility that you subconsciously were surfing around the site and clicked on it without realizing it. Ya know what? Don't mind me It's 5 am and I haven't slept yet after two days of working on the Subscription Spy.

Dang! I lost the results on the C forum, and the C++ forum worked.

I just had a thought -- I think I just figured out whats happening. Here's what I do:
1) Middle click on the C/C++ forum to open the forum in another tab, expecting the 'first unread' icons to point to first unread posts.
2) Double click on the folder icon to mark the threads read.
3) Go to the tab and start middle clicking on 'first unread' icon.
4) Each thread is now at the last post.

What's happening is the double-click on the folder dynamically resets everything -- including the icons on the thread tabs. Which means before I even look at the threads, they've all been marked read.

Up until Oct/Nov, that double-click did not reset the "first unread" icons. Now it does.

I'll test this tomorrow.

Hahaha! Double clicking on the folder name has been marking the forum as read ever since vBulletin 3.5, which we upgraded to a very, very long time ago (well over a year).

However, if you ever had your Control Panel preferences set to have clientside scripting off (i.e. that option in the CP having to do with the hover tooltips) then that feature would have been disabled as well.

Haven't you noticed all these months that when you double clicked the folder, the icon turned from yellow to greyed out in real time?

Poor Walt ... being frustrated all this time and the solution was so simple. The reason why this happens is because the URL for the new post icon takes you to a page called newpostinthread.html, which then looks up the last post for you in the database, and redirects you there. However, by the time you click the icon to have it look up the post, it's too late, because it's already been marked read.

Yes, I noticed that the folder greyed out. I was under the wrong impression that if I generated the forum list, the 'first unread' would get me to the first post at the time I generated the list. I had no idea the link was a relative link and it would change on me.

Unfortunately, the way the code is designed, posts can get easily lost between the time a forum list is generated and you finish processing the forum. Any posts posted after you've finished a thread and before you get back to double click the folder will also become 'read', and therefore lost.

I guess I'll have to use the "forum tools" dropdown, unless you've added an easier link for marking a forum read on the forum page. Yes, I hear the groans about easier -- I've always been a proponent of the one-click club because I have rat-o-phobia -- I don't like the mouse and no one ever programs keystrokes anymore. Oh well.

There are three ways to mark a forum read:

1) Double click on it's folder. This works from the homepage as well as from the forum pages.

2) Use the dropdown menu from the forum page.

3) Forums are automatically marked read when the last new thread is read.

Yes, I know
1) I have to navigate back to the home page
2) takes multiple clicks and mouse movement
3) I don't look at every single thread

#2 is probably the most usable for timing purposes.

3) You don't need to look at every single thread. When you visit the latest thread in the listing, the entire forum gets marked read.

Walt, please confirm this thread can be marked solved (or do so). Thanks.