As you can probably guess you can get real-time updates of new replies and threads using the forum spy which we will be testing for the next few weeks, hopefully server loads won't be affected dramatically by its use.
Now, because we had no more space on the menu I had to remove one of the previous items and "New posts" I believe was the easiest to sacrifice because Today's Post works more or less the same unless you have not visited for a long time. Like jobeard pointed out, it's still available from the Quick links menu.
May I suggest flipping Today into Quick Links and revert New Posts to the Tab position --
giving priority to newest changes rather than 'all of today' which can be excessive to scroll through.
I still don't understand it exactly
Or what the tick does, or the play button
Or what the whole thing is for
Oh and I don't like the Title name: "forum Spy"
I haven't used it, except to be confused on what it's telling me.
Also just to add to this thread (about buttons), what do these buttons do?
Because, clicking on them doesn't take me to what the Title says
In case it's not as straightforward as I thought, the forum spy feature is meant to be useful for users like kimsland that visit quite often.
The forum spy gives a real-time outlook of what's going on in the forum, new posts and threads created without page reloads - updates from the server every 20 seconds using AJAX.
BTW, this has nothing to do with the search box on the top which uses a tabbed interface for a one-click switch, narrowing the search scope to the section of your choice.
Actually if it did that would be good, I prefer a live scrolling screen
Edit:
Regarding the search box, when I clicked on the buttons it took me to reply or who know where (it was really strange!)
But after my post it now works perfectly, so you tell me?