Problem: following unread comments

I'm finding it a little hard to keep up with new posts the way I used to. One, the 'daily digest' of new comments sent to my email is not up and running yet. I hear it's on the list. Two, I'm not sure I prefer the new style of clicking on a message where it takes you to a page with just the first message in the thread plus the one you're reading. In a long thread, you often want to read a selection of messages that are quite some distance from the original post...my preference was on the old site where it would bring up your current message but always show the hierarchy of subject headings and how they were connected, so you could easily browse a sub-tree and all its responses. You can kind of do this now, but it involves using the 'back' button on your browser, and due to my next problem, this is unsatisfactory. In a thread with many messages, it doubles the number of pages to load, because you always have to go back to find the list of comments. Also, I'm finding it quite slow to reload pages using the back button, but this might be because I'm on the road using a slow dial-up. I would guess that the new design is to save time with loading pages (remember those hideously long threads that took forever to load), but in fact I'm finding this not much quicker, and a bit more confusing. The third problem which ties in with the above is that I don't get a clear indication of which posts have been read and which I'm yet to read. When I first view a message thread, there are little red asterisks which seem to indicate new posts, or ones I've not yet read. All well and good, until I go to read one. I go to the message and can no longer see the list of threads. To continue browsing I use the back button and see the list again, but now every red asterisk has disappeared, and I can't tell where I've been. Somehow they've been refreshed as 'read' even though I've not viewed them yet. If I'm reading at a time when there is low traffic, the box at the side showing recent comments is useful. However if there has been a lot of activity, or one particular thread that's drawn a lot of discussion, pretty soon other unread posts are lost down the list. I realise this used to happen on the front page of the old site, but it was a lot easier to go to a forum and instantly see what was newly added. I like to make a habit of reading the several posts that precede a comment, so if I'm going to make a response it is in the context of previous discussion. I'm sure people have been annoyed, too, by those questions that are sometimes asked in a topic when, if the writer had only read the few posts before, they'd have found it was already answered. I'm not sure that this is so easy to do with the current format. Still exploring, though. There might be a simple trick I've missed? When I access the forums by clicking the drop down menu at the top of the page, there's a handy little list of posts with a comment indicating the most recent activity. That seems the best way to find recent comments, although once I follow them I get the same situation I've just described. What do the little red envelopes and other symbols mean? Cheers, Craig