I’m not sure about this, I think I saw new replies (not immediately, but I’ve to check this again in some way). I almost lost some unread topics, but that was because this long weekend (Easter). I’ve re-configured my profile to show notifications for all unread posts (Consider topics new when = I haven’t viewed them yet) and that shows me a lot of unread posts (it took some time to show me the unread messages, it looks like the notifications are generated in some kind of periodic job):
I have the same setting, but only new topics get the blue mark on the Categories page, not old topics with new replies. I’ve had to go to Latest to see anything involving new replies. Of course, I still get personal notifications when I watch topics, but that’s not the same as seeing recent replies in untracked topics, like the Latest page and old Categories page show.
Yeah, the style doesn’t change with new replies (but the topic is bumped). I asked in the Discourse forum but got no answer.
About the Categories page, I think the current frontpage (Categories w/latest topics) is not perfect, but is less noisy than the default one (Categories + Latest), and Latest page already show the information of the default one.
I’m not sure, but it looks like the default Categories + Latest frontpage doesn’t offer any extra information than the Categories w/latest topics, but it has something better: it looks like there is activity in the forum.
I’ll make this: Make “Latest” the default as initially, and then think about some kind of header to show the main categories (Help & Guides).