The number, when it's a link, which is when it's bigger than 50, takes you to the thread split into separate pages of 50 messages at a time. The top of each page has links to the others, so you can skip to the last page of a long thread without waiting for the rest to download.

The 'd' stands for descending order, and does the same thing with the messages listed backwards and starting on the last page, so gets you soonest to the most recent postings.

I asked for the number link to take you to the last page by default (since that's almost invariably what you'd want to use it for) by my suggestion was rejected. It's still better than nothing.

I've always considered the Mudcat to be one of the best sites I've seen for simple readable text and lack of clutter. I appreciate that some of the accessibility issues mentioned could be improved, but I would have thought that this site is far ahead of many others for that and general compatibility, and for content over fancy presentation. And for all the complaints about the thread organisation, it's way ahead of many others.

(I'd never tried that 'printer friendly' link till it was mentioned above - excellent work!)

Anahata