Your first paragraph is what I expect, and has remained fairly constant, since the early days.
It is the way I have browsed RCU since the day I discovered it I never see the front page, unless forced.

The 30 minute inactivity timeout may be what's getting me. I wish this were user-defined,
as I would set it to "session indefinite". As long as I have that session open, I want to be able to
go back to the first page, even if it's three hours later. Even though all the posts on page one would be
new by then, and the old posts aged to later pages. That's the desired effect of the way I browse RCU

I can understand opening a new browser counting as a "new visit" since "last visit", and only
new posts (or no posts, as the case may be) being displayed. This is a useful function also,
and one I use at least once or twice a day, when the pages become too numerous, and I've
browsed all I want to through the older topics. I open a new session, to have a clean slate.


But... it's quite often that I'll get linked offsite, spend 20 minutes to an hour elsewhere, outside
smoking, on the telephone, or (gasp) actually working, sometimes. I liked the fact that I
could keep the browser open, come back to page one later... and see new posts, while
the old ones are still there, maybe just a few pages down the order by then.
It drives me nuts when I get back to page one and get the "no new posts" thing.
(Though sometimes I don't get that... I get script errors, and upon refreshing the page, all is well.)

At any rate, thanks for listening. .. and thanks for always looking for new tweaks.


--
Chris