What happens with the "View First Unread" link?

[sereneiders]

I was looking trought the Comment Box but I didn't find an answer.

When you post in a thread, you're automatically suscribed to it. Once you get back to your susrcibed thread, you have a link "View First Unread" at the top, allowing you to do what the link says (obviously). A pretty nice feature.

However, it happend to me that I enter a suscribed thread (either from the suscription list at my "User CP", or from somewhere else) but the link doesn't show up.

Since I develop websites, before posting this I wanted to figure out the mechanics leading this link to be shown up or not. I supposed this has to do with the amount of time the information of the last post you read is keept, if it's no longer there, then the link wouldn't be shown. However, it doesn't seem to be the case, and I am giving up.

Does someone knows the logic behind this link?

It also happend that I am not warned of a new post in a suscribed thread. I don't know if this is correlated to the link issue. In some cases this seemed so arbitrary as to allow me to supose it's the effect of an administrator action, perhaps a side effect (like, and index process wich also depurates a file tracking the suscriptions).

It isn't SO important, I know.... but I am really curious by now.

[JustAskJulie]

I'm sorry I haven't answered this earlier. I've been recovering from having my tonsils out and when I first read it I thought that was the reason I didn't understand the question, so I figured I'd wait a bit and answer it when my brain was working. Maybe it's still not working because I'm still a little confused as to the question.

The "view first unread" option is available a few different ways, you can get it from subscribed threads, you can also get it by clicking the little arrow to the left of a thread title in any list of threads (from the thread list in a forum, the new posts link on the top menu or the active threads topics list on the top menu).

I believe Cookies are used to determine what threads have been read with the list being reset based on your last visit to the site. I believe you have to stay on the site for a certain length of time before it resets what is listed as "unread". You can also reset this list manually by using the link under Quick Links on the top menu then "Mark Forums Read".

I don't know if I answered your question or not, hopefully the info at least helped.

[sereneiders]

Thanks, Julie.

I hope you´re doing it weel with your new throat

Well... it seems to me you answered my question, even when it seems I wasn't clear enough as to make an understandable question.

The point is, it use to happens when I enter a thread I where I recently posted, that the "view first unread" link doesn't appears, even when it appears in threads I didn't posted nor read fo way more time.

At first I guessed something pretty close to what you said, that perhaps there was a "due time" for the tracking of each thread visiter, or that they were being tracked via cookie and there was a limit. I even checked the cookie, but didn't helped (it has a few numbers wich doesn't seem to correltate with the thread's or post's numbers, nor the amount correlates with the amount of threads being effectively tracked).

Another posibility is, the tracking is being stored in the server, but there's a limit of threads being tracked per user, as new threads to track appears, the track of another one is lost, with an arbitraty criteria, like the oldest one, the less visited one, the oldest visited one, the one having less movement, or something like this that would be hard to figure out.

In any case, we're both gessing here, and even when this remains as a mistery, you gave me a pretty valid answer