Message board question

[SpiderSkins]

OK, I'm new and still learning the ropes on how these message boards work, so please bear with me. (And if there is a better place to post "technical" questions, I didn't see it.)

As I just joined a few minutes ago, when I go to a board I expected all the topics to say they have "new posts" since they are all certainly new to me as I've never logged on before. But they all had those gray check boxes next to them. Is that just one of those quirky things or am I missing something?

Thanks. (One step closer to getting my own cool avatar. )

[BossHog]

... because you don't have a cookie set on your computer until you have logged in to the forum with your user name. Once you have logged in with your user name, the cookie takes note of how many posts there have been to the forum and then will subsequently note all new posts thereafter and 'flag them'.