Ahh but that needs Don to do some extra coding - though I agree its worth while. Actually I'd prefer both options as sometimes you've read everything - or at least marked them so the way I use the board...

But on your switching to flat view there's no need for that once you've marked all threads as read. Flat view should be banned and its why I'm looking into changing my board to one that supports threads. E-Blah has many great things but threading is more important than any of them IMO.