Thanks for this discovery southlander! Moving from OS5 to OS7, I missed this option!
Me too. I had an OS6 (Curve 3G) device only for about one month after I killed my Tour (by accident). So I never noticed on OS6 that one could do that.
You can use the trackpad or the screen to swipe to next or previous message. I've always used N and P shortcuts. Keyboard shortcuts are one of the reasons I'm back to bb.