Until recently, I would look for new messages manually by scrolling down the topics on the forum, looking for icons that indicated material that I had not read already. This is not all that hard to do, and a great way to introduce yourself to the forum.
There is a much better way, though, to quickly see whether a new article has been posted, and whether the title is of particular interest to you. The concept of RSS feeds has been around for quite a while, and I've only just now gotten around to checking it out. If you're in the same boat, you've got a nice surprise coming.
The Curvemeister forum's
RSS feed feature is a great way to keep up on the latest news.
FireFox or Explorer will show you a list of the most recent posts to the board, and you can click on a link to subscribe to the feed, and decide where in your favorites you want the feed to show up. I generally choose the favorites bar.
After you've subscribed, you'll get a shortcut in the form of a drop-down menu of recent messages, with an icon for each article indicating whether you have read it or not. The accompanying screen-shots show how this will look in FireFox and Internet Explorer 8.
By default, your RSS feed will show the last 5 articles that have been posted. You can change this by using the
advanced RSS feed options, and a
discussion of RSS feeds in general.
