Navigation through the Thread/Discussion pages

Gerard, The Page Forward and the Page Back buttons, in the discussion threads, are ONLY at the bottom of the page. This forces one to scroll to the bottom of the page, then click on a Page Forward/Back button. And repeat, to finally get to the later entries in the thread.

I know that you have started showing the double Forward/Back ("<<" or ">>") symbols, but these do not always appear on the older discussion threads, making navigation to the longer threads, exasperating.

I would like to suggest two things, in regards to this navigation hindrance:

1.  Place the Page Forward/Back button on the top of the page, near the beginning of the discussion, as well as at the bottom of the page.

2.  Since the forum software is (attempting) to keep track of which threads a user has visited, can not also the software keep the last page of a thread that the user has visited and upon returning at a later time, open that thread (when the user clicks on the link to it) at or near the last posting since the user last visited that thread? That would eliminate a lot of the Page Forward clicking, data transmission and time spent navigating to the unread responses.

Thanks