Such as this one :
http://www.zozoll-online.com/forum
(sorry, it's french speaking, but I think english people may understand how it works, vocabulary is not very hard)
How it works :
-> When a user read a topic, it is marked as readen.
-> When a user read the first topic of a category, the category is marked as readen. So we don't need to mark all topic readen when we want to unflag a category.
-> When a user post is a readen topic, it passes to unread for all the other users.
-> When the firts topic of a category is marked unreaden, the category is marked as unreaden.
-> In the category and the topic screens, the others category are written on the top of the screen, with readen/unreaden flag, enabling to go directly in a category without needing to go back to the main page. And we can see if someone posted a new message in another category.
-> When a user read a post, a small blue flag apprear on the topic.
-> When someone respond to the topic, this flag become red.
-> When clicking on a flag, we jump to our last rode post, avoiding to search where we had stoped the conversation.
-> There are 2 flag at the top of the category page. The blue one enable user to seen every topic he already readen (blue and red flags). The red one enable user to see all the topic he readen and where another user posted an answer.
If you don't understand something, ask me, I'll try to post some screenshots to explain this.
Don't hesitate to log in the forum to see these function, it is a french speaking forum, but most of the people can speak english too.
- Edit : Some gramatical correction. My english speaking level is very low
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I kinda get the jist, that we have to set our last visited time in some database