Maiden speech from an old man

[Alex Tweedly]

On 25/07/2014 16:24, Richmond wrote (my emphasis added):
>
> From my point of view the *only thing that is an advantage* of the 
> Use-List is that messages come sequentially: one doesn't have to keep 
> hunting through the sections of the Forums to find out
> whether new posting are there.
What more advantage does anyone need ?

It's beyond me how anyone can be bothered with the forums (which makes 
me wonder if what I need for the forums is a "Forums for Dummies" guide).

How do you tell which forums and/or which topics have posts you haven't 
read yet ?
How do you tell which forums and/or which topics have posts you have 
newly arrived ?
     (Yes, those are two different questions).

How do you set it up so that each morning (while you drink your coffee), 
you laptop will download all the new posts and have them (already 
identified as above) ready for you to read (i.e. while offline) ?

How do you compose a reply while offline ? (No, writing a reply in an 
editor or email and then copying/pasting won't count).

If I could solve those questions then I might have a chance of sticking 
to using the forums for more than a couple of days. The topic comes up 
ever so often, I go look at the forums, see ow much good stuff there is 
in there, swear to myself I will use them and try to keep up - and 
within a week I've lapsed because it is just too time consuming and 
frustrating.

So - is there a "beginner's guide" ?

-- Alex.