When you choose to browse a conference the first screen you see is an overview of activity in that conference, a welcome message, and a set of options.   

Conference Options

Prev conf | Next conf | Enter New Topic | Participants | Forget | Read New | Help

The "Previous Conference" and "Next Conference" options allow you to jump forward or backward one conference in your conference list.

"Enter New Topic" allows you to create a new topic in the current conference. Only a conference host may create the first topic in a conference.

"Participants" shows you a list of all the people who have joined the the various topics in the current conference.

The "Forget" option allows you to remove yourself from the current conference. The conference will still show up in the list of available conferences, but the information on what you have already read will be deleted. The conference will no longer show up in your customized conference list.

"Read New" takes you to the first topic in your topic list with new activity, and presents it to you to read.

Choosing the "Help" option will get you to the help screens where you can get, you guessed it, help!  

Topic List

When you first choose a conference, you are presented with a list of the topics in that conference. By default that list contains only topics that have had a new response since the last time you read the topic. Each row of the list is composed of the topic number, the number of responses, and the subject. If you are viewing "read-only" conferences without logging in, the software will display all activity within the last week.  

Possible ranges

All | New | Activity within last week | Forgotten

With the "All" command, you may choose to view all the topics and responses in the conference, and not just the ones that have seen recent activity.

You may also select to see only topics with "new" activity. That is, topics that have new responces since the last time you visited.

Or you may select to see only those topics that have seen activity within the last 7 days.

Or choose to see the topics you previously chose to "forget." Searching
The "Search" button takes you to a screen where you can search the contents of all the responses in the current conference. You can search only the subject lines of each topic, or you can choose to search through all the words in all the responses in all topics.

Read-Only Conferences

Some conferences allow anyone to read them, whether they are a registered user or not. To read one of these, just click on the name of the conference. After you've read through all the responses in a topic you may want to add your own response.