Ron, I have been using Chrome also... sometimes I revert to Safari. My "solution" for knowing what has been read is fairly simple. As I read, I open each topic in a new window... then when I close it and am ready to go to the next topic I just click the Home button at the top left of the page. That forces a refresh and "turns off" the New Posts icon. That may not be the best method, one of the moderators would probably give you the best answer... but, it works for me and it's easy to remember. I know this doesn't work well for individual messages, but it does for the main topics. Hope this helps.

I use Chrome at home and IE8 at work and haven't noticed a difference in operation between them.