The behavior of the active topics icon is working as the forums were originally designed.

Your last visit date gets read from the database whenever you log back in. This happens through an explicit login, or through an automatic login (if you've enabled that) whenever your session has expired (through inactivity or closing your browser).

Immediately after reading the last visit date/time, the current time is stamped back into the database. This was happening only once, immediately after your login. I've changed it to keep updating the last visit time/date as you do anything on the site. This should make the last visit date/time closer to the time you actually left the site.

The decision to display the active topics icon is based on the last visit time read from the database upon your login. This value is kept throughout your session since it's meant to indicate things that have changed "since your last visit". If you make a new post, well that's a change since your last visit. If you were to log out and come back later, then the new posts in your previous session would not show up as active topics.

Note that the active topic icon is not meant to indicate that something has changed since the last time you looked at that topic/forum - only that something has changed since your last visit (login session) on the site.

Bruce Luckcuck
Director, Applications & Support Services
Wiley Publishing, Inc.