i've been using the new link to go to the last read post in each topic and it doesnt seem to be linking me to the correct area. i cant really place where it ends up because it seems rather random.
i dont see any anchors in your source code. perhaps adding them in would make it easier? i hate to say it, but phpbb does a pretty good job of this, if you get stuck, maybe you can check out the source from there and see if you can apply it here?
there are anchors for the top and bottom of the page, but not for individual posts, which would make it easier to link to the first newest one from the discussions page.
oh man, really? i'll have to check again. i looked a couple times and didn't see them.
ok i looked, i see what you mean now. i was checking through all the divs and wasnt catching them. i saw the "item" tags and thought they may have been unrelated, but upon further inspection, i see the "comment_#" IDs.
There are two different types of anchors in the comments page. the "comment_" type and the "item_" type. The comment_ is suffixed with the actual ID of the comment, and the item_ is suffixed with the item number in the page (the third comment on any given page would be item_3).
These are used from various places to jump to areas of the page. My big problem is that I think due to css, the actual anchor is appearing (to the browser) to be below the username of the person posting. Which is just confusing.
On top of that, the "new" link from the discussion summary isn't aiming at the correct item in the page (sometimes).
The second issue is a relatively simple fix. The first issue is more of a bitch.
Re:confusingness. I think that it's a styling question. Styled as it is right now (w/o underlines) it wouldn't at all contribute to confusion cause you aren't really going to roll over the "last comment by" link unless you want it to be a link. If it is styled differently though, with underlines or some too obvious different background-color, then I think it would get a bit confusing.
The "last comment" text and username should link to the comment. 99% of people don't really care about going to the user profile of someone until they have actually read something by them.
Username linking to profile is more textually logical, but it is not more functionally logical.
The new link should aim at [total posts you can see] - [total new posts] + 1. I am guessing you know this since you said that it only sometimes doesn't work.