We need to be able to view all posts in a thread at the same time. It's too daunting that we have to click on each post and only see that post. It's difficult when replying to a post because you lose visibility of the post you're replying to.
We need to try and take a close look at what other forum software does, like the PHP Bulletin board Software, and the openNTF project xTalk and see if we can integrate in some of that UI.