Those two things were lost when the board was reformatted.
Seeing who's online is no longer possible... if someone has found this feature, please enlighten us.
The way to tell if a thread has new posts is the icon at the beginning of the line in the forum view. If the file folder (or whatever) is yellow, there are new posts.
For a few days after the new format, the instant messaging feature was on and that was really fun! Then the powers that be disabled it.
I've actually forgotten how the old format worked.
