If you frequent the Joel on Software discussion forums, you know that you now have the ability to register for an account.  The immediate benefit is obvious - getting the little green check next to your name in your posts is pretty sweet.  But what else can you do with an account?

Joel mentions the ability to star posts in his introduction.  If there's a discussion thread you're following closely, you can star it by clicking the empty star next to the title.  Once you do, it's easily accessible via the Starred menu in the upper right corner.  You'll notice that the Starred menu also includes a Recent section which lists the posts that you've been reading, which is more convenient than the browser history since it persists even if you switch computers.

Another benefit of being able to log in is using the expanded search capabilities.  There's a big search box at the top of the page when you're logged in.  Go ahead and hit the Search button without entering any text in the box.  Click on the "Advanced search features for discussion topics" link to open up the list of all the "axes" on which you can search.  These axes add significantly to the search capabilities of the forum.

For instance, I often want to know if there's been a response to threads I posted on.  Now it's easy for me to check - I search for
editedby:eric -lasteditedby:eric
which does a search for threads where I posted, but wasn't the last poster.  To keep it to recent threads, I can search for
edited:"this week" editedby:eric -lasteditedby:eric
or
edited:"this month" editedby:eric -lasteditedby:eric

If I'm feeling nostalgic and want to see the threads I posted on in March, I can use
editedby:eric edited:"March 2007"

Of course, I can combine all of these search axes with keywords to restrict the search further.

Hopefully, this sneak peek of what Joel called "our in-house, under-development, unannounced version of FogBugz 6" will whet your appetite for other search improvements in FogBugz coming your way.  Stay tuned...