Update for new feature just installed: Private Messaging

I see the problem but cannot make it happen on purpose. Please let me know if you see it again.Edited by Admin, : Grammar.

---

--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

Cheers Percy!The PM function works great. It's already come in handy, letting me and Briterican co-ordinate our all important role-playing gaming activities (I'm more likely to see a message here than in my main email!).Mutate and Survive

Heh, I can't get it to happen anymore.Problem solved! I almost always right-click and open in new tab. I'll either pick the latest message from the all topics page and go right to it or go to one of the page numbers from the topic column. I'll open a few new tabs from the all topics page and then go through them individually to find (occasionally) one of the pages hasn't loaded fully.

See Message 1.Just giving this a bump since I released this during the holidays. I'll give it one more bump in a week or so, or when I release the Contact List enhancement.

---

--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

Just sent test message to Oni cc'ed to CS.Reply if working. Let me know here if not.

In order to private message another user, must I first click on the "Messaging" link near the top, and then type in their user name?This will never do, not with how lazy I am...A few suggestions you've likely already thought about:1. I think that someone will most likely think of private-messaging another member after reading a post of theirs. Perhaps you could create a link for sending a new private message to the authour of each post?2. A link to send someone a private message when viewing their profile page would also be nice.3. When creating a new private message, it would be crazy-cool if the "To", "CC" and "BCC" fields included an optional drop-down menu where you could pick user names from. This would help reduce any user-frustration from spelling other-user-names since there are many that use strange spelling or sometimes hard-to-see lettering). Or, along these lines but even cooler, would it be possible to create some sort of auto-completing field? Like how Google works now? That is... if I was to type in "S" it would list all names alphabetically starting with S:S2n
s3oo0ood
saab93f
...Then if I typed "St" it would list all names alphabetically starting with St:St.Crispin
Staccato
Stagamancer
...then if I typed "Sti" it would only list all names beginning like that:Stile(Which just happens to be only me)That would be really cool. But perhaps not possible with the board software? If such auto-narrowing of the user name is not possible, maybe a drop down list would just be too crowded to be of any use. Maybe that's why there's not one there? Maybe some sort of user-name error checking so that the sender of the private message is notified if they attempt to send a message to a user that does not exist?All in all, thanks very much for giving me my inch. Now I'm going to hound you with requests until I get my mile. And remember, I'm lazy And I have a grossly over-inflated sense of entitlement. That's just how I roll. So lazy that I probably won't even finish th...

About 1, 2 and 3a, they're coming in the next update, whose primary feature is contact lists. Not sure when that will be, but not too long. It's mostly done, I'm currently ruminating about how best to integrate the dropdown for selecting names. As with houses, the finish work takes the longest.About 3b, I want to do this. It requires Ajax, which we already use, but it also requires some nifty dynamic menu coding, for which a great deal of code is implemented but not yet released as I haven't deemed it ready for prime time yet. I continue to think about how and whether I can deliver something reliable and solid in the short term.

---

--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

Hey Percy,The messaging system seems to be working fine. I have one piece of feedback:I got a message from Straggler with Oni CC'd, and when I hit "Reply All" it also put myself in the 'To' line, or maybe it was the CC line. That's atypical from my experiences. And I can't think of why I would be sending the reply to myself as well. Especially since there's a 'Sent' box too.You should get rid of that.

I've just installed a software update for the first stage of implementation of contact lists. More functionality is coming soon, this version has these features:

• In the Private Messaging navigation bar there is now a "Contact Lists" heading under which will be listed your contact lists. Click on a contact list to see the contacts in the list. Initially, of course, you will have no contact lists.
  ​
• Also in the navigation bar is an "Add Contact List" link. Click on it to add a contact list. A dialog window will pop up into which you can enter the name of the new contact list. Click "Go" or hit enter.
  ​
• After creating a contact list you'll be taken to the Contact List page where you can add contacts. Click on the "Add Contacts" button. A dialog window will pop up into which you can enter the names of members, separated by commas. Click "Go" or hit enter.
  ​
• To use a contacts list simply include it in the To, Cc or Bcc lists, but preceded with the at sign character: @. For example, if you have a contacts list called Friends, then to send a private message to your friends you would enter @Friends in the To list box.
  ​
• There is one contact list that is automatically created for you. Each time you send a message, everyone on the distribution list is added to the "All Contacts" list. You can edit who is on this list, and you can even delete the list, though it will be created again the next time you send a message.

Next I will be adding links in a few handy places for sending private messages. For example, message posts will include a link for sending the author a private message.After that I will be making it possible to select names from contact lists for insertion in the To, Cc and Bcc lists.

---

--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

I've just installed a software update that provides links to send private messages in several convenient places:

• In the display of messages, a link to send an author a private message now appears with the rest of the author's information. Look for "Send Private Message" beneath the Member Rating and above the link for displaying only that member's posts.
  ​
• On a member's thread list page, the "Send Private Message" link appears at the top of the page with the other member information. It appears beneath the profile and email links and above the post rate.
  ​
• On a member's profile page, the "Send Private Message" link appears at the top left of the box of profile information.

---

--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

This should be fixed now.

---

--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

Whoo! Private messging is fun! (I was told in kindergarten that I'm supposed to compliment something before I bring up some negative aspects... it's supposed to be polite... or something...) Anyway, 2 tidbits of information you may or may not care about. Very minor, anyway:1. I got a private message back on January 6th. I replied to it today, and used the "with quote" function. The function worked great, except the date at the top of the quote was today's date (the date I was replying). I think it should really be the date of whenever the original message was sent, no? Since that is what's being quoted...For example (copied from the private message itself):

quote:

---

My new message text here (the reply I made).

​

Member Who Originally Sent Me A Message at 01-06-2010 2:21 PM

Original Message Text Here

---

(I've edited the member link to go to my profile to keep the actual message sender private. It was, afterall, a private message)The "01-20-2010 7:43 AM" is when I replied to the original message. Or, it may be when I opened it to read it the first time...
The original message was actually sent to me on January 6th. You can see it, if you can abuse your admin-powers to see my private messaging inbox, the original message is still there (I have no problems with this, if it will help at all).And, yes, I understand that it took me 2 weeks to notice I had a private message waiting for me Which leads me to my second point:2. Is it possible to also provide email-notification of a new private message?
I do understand that the "Messaging" link changes to "Messaging (X)" whenever you have X new messages at the top of the page... but by now you must know how incredibly lazy I am. On top of that, I'm also a bit touched-in-the-head and don't always read the entire page In other news... thanks for the cool new Private Messaging feature, it really is a good feature.(That compliment was not forced, unless my kindergarten-conditioning goes even deeper than I imagine...)

That was the original intention, obviously just a case of referencing the wrong variable. Easy to fix, thanks for catching this! Yes. I'll add this to the enhancement list. It also blinks every 10 seconds. Blinking is incredibly annoying to most people, that's why I chose a 10 second interval. Would a faster interval make it more noticeable without being annoying? Laziness is the mother of invention. If Heinlein didn't say it he should have.

---

--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

Awesome! I agree with the annoying-blinking thing. No, I don't think a faster blinking interval would become more-noticeable while staying not-annoying. If you are indeed implementing an email notification for it... I would recommend getting rid of the blinking all together. Yes sir. Some of the time I'm just playing "innocent stupid user" to do my part in helping you develop your software for "the public" (who generally think they're innocent and not stupid, but are wrong on both counts)
The rest of the time, I really am lazy... will you be implementing a feature that will separate my whites from my colours for the laundry?

This is fixed.

---

--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director