Idea for post display in forums Options

[*mipadi*]

I've been toying with this idea for post display in the cB forums. Right now, threads are displayed in a linear fashion, with new posts being appended to the end. That's not necessarily the most optimal way to displaying posts, though. It would make more sense to have a "threaded view". Basically, the first poster makes a post. Someone responds to his post, so her post is indented slightly underneath the original post. Then another user responds to the original post, and this new post gets indented the same amount. Then another user responds to the second post; rather than going to the end of the display, it goes directly underneath the post to which that user is responded, but it is indented slightly more.

I came up with a quick mockup of what I mean (click on it for more detail):

In this example, user mipadi (aka Yours Truly) made a post (it could be a new thread or just anywhere in a thread). disco infiltrator then responded to my post, and user acid bath slayer responded to hers. libertie responded to disco infiltrator's post too, so she goes at the same level as Acid Bath Slayer. iRock cB responded to my post and so is indented the same as disco infiltrator's.

The problem is that it can be hard to find new posts, since they are not automatically at the end, so new posts are highlighted. This is where the colors come in. Read posts are have the normal blue header; unread, or new, posts have a green header; and your posts are highlighted with a yellow header (in the above example, user Acid Bath Slayer is the logged-in user reading the thread). New posts could also be marked with some sort of icon along one of the margins (probably right, since I have avatars on the left), but I didn't go to the effort of actually making an icon yet.

The problem is that I'm not sure if the forum software supports this kind of organization, but if it does, I think this would be an interesting idea.

Caveat: This is not intended to be a "final design", so please don't critique the design itself. I whipped it out in about fifteen minutes. I do like certain elements of it, but it's by no means complete; I just wanted something that would show my idea.