The users must click on the "New posts"-link for it to work. Only reading the topic won't remove the icon.

As the section of code that handles all of this in viewforum uses the last_post id couldn't that be appended to the [new posts] link in some form. If there have been new posts since the last visit then the last_post id is bound to be different so it will be a new link.

I've implemented this and it seems to work fine. One problem is that viewtopic does a "header redirect", and then it's not checked as visited by the browsers. Changing the redirect to use meta-refresh instead solves the problem, but it's quite ugly (the page loads twice).

Edit: It also looks weird to have lines without the icon when pressing "Show unanswered posts". Though, this lines can probably be removed completely in v1.2 when we have more markup.

I knew there had to be a catch. The only way around that one is to append either a timestamp or the id of the new post to the link so it is a unique link each time. Oh well, back to the drawing board.

Yeah, exactly what I was trying to explain :)

An id or somehing sounds okay. I think this solution is way better than any other "cookie-solution" that has been mentioned earlier.

There is actually no need to get rid of the image or anything else. Changing the colour of [new posts] or going from bold to normal would probably be enough of an indicator. In fact if you just left the default behaviour of A:visited most people would recognise it.

Why not remove it completely? Maybe change to a "gray" image instead.

Another problem is the image on the first page...

You have different links for each new post in the topic-list! Like this:

http://punbb.org/forums/viewtopic.php?pid=18156#18156

I think it's a great idea! :D

2 different classes

1 class with link and visited different looking to each others
1 class with link and visited looking like the 1st visited ...

wouldn't that solve the whole problem?
So when you put that icon there, you also use the first class, othervise the 2nd?

This way you probably won't have any problems with that reading posts from two different browsers will affect how it's viewed (as you need to read stuff, run to another computer, and read the same forum before the timeout occurs)

There is actually no need to get rid of the image or anything else. Changing the colour of [new posts] or going from bold to normal would probably be enough of an indicator. In fact if you just left the default behaviour of A:visited most people would recognise it.

I wonder what would happen if the icon was made a link with the same destination and class as the [new post] text. Maybe they would both vanish.

This way you get visual feedback which is what most people are after without any coding.

Rickard wrote:

The funny thing is that vBulletin 2, one of the most popular discussion boards on the web, works identically to PunBB, but I have never heard any complaints about it in any vB forums.

I neve used a vBulletin 2... I always used a phpBB or the forums hosted by www.miarroba.com.

I don't doubt that a second. vBulletin is still a lot more popular than phpBB though.