This is minor, but when there are new replies to a thread you see the number of new replies in brackets in the "replies" column... but when the thread is new and has no replies there's nothing to make it stand out. Could it be changed so that when a thread is unread and has no replies it shows "0 (*)" in the "replies" column?
Sometimes when I have a bunch of new threads with no replies I miss some of the unread ones because I tend to focus on the bracket indicator.
