Inbox Redesign

[momijizukamori]

This post is for feedback for the redesigned inbox! As this is a redesign rather than a port, 'it's different' isn't useful feedback - please let me know how that difference is impacting you!

In particular, I'd like feedback from phone/tablet users, and from people who regularly get inbox messages in languages that use different character sets than English (languages that use Cyrillic, various East Asian languages, etc) - a lot of the elements of the redesign were meant to address problems with these.

Fixed Issues

• 'Unread' message filter missing from the navigation sidebar
  
• All entries are showing up collapsed, even unread ones.
  
• Odd word-breaking behavior in subjects and messages
  
• Action/navigation buttons are no longer in the footer as well
  
• Spacing between subject and timestamp
  
• Have to click on the checkbox rather than anywhere on the message to select it
  
• Expand/collapse does not work on read messages
  
• 'Delete all for this entry'/'Mark all read for this entry' does not work
  
• Selected messages aren't highlighted
  
• Intermittant weirdness/failures when using the in-message comment moderation tools
  
• The bottom message on one page is duplicated at the top of the next page
  
• Clicking a link in a message also causes that message to get marked as selected.
  
• Missing link to the beta comm in the header
  
• No confirmation dialogue for 'Delete All'
  
• Deleting messages via JS causes expanded/collapsed status to reset on other messages on the page.
  
• Current page button color is incorrect in all site schemes
  
• Not enough space between compose button and manage/refresh links
  
• Following reply link does not mark message as read
  
• Actions doesn't work with JS off
  
• Links in read messages aren't muted in color
  
• Images embedded in inbox notifications overflow badly
  

Fixed But Not Live

Known Issues

• Navigation buttons reflow in a kind of ugly way on some screen sizes
  
• Not enough space between action buttons
  
• Mark All Read button doesn't update text on press
  
• No warning when you've hit the max number of flagged messages (just silent failure)
  
• Left-clicking on message actions is slow and does not always correctly redirect.
  

Possible Tweaks

• Separate filters for comments and entries
  
• Wording for buttons
  

EDIT: A proposal for alternate button interaction, to cut down on the number of action buttons for people with JS on (no-JS would still get a slightly cluttered view):

• if nothing is selected, the two buttons are 'Mark All Read' and 'Delete All'
  
• if anything is selected, 'Delete All' becomes 'Delete Selected'
  
• if anything selected is read, 'Mark All Read' becomes 'Mark Read' (or possibly 'Mark Selected Read') - a mix of read and unread marked would get this
  
• if all selected are read, 'Mark All Read' becomes 'Mark Unread' (or 'Mark Selected Unread'
  

Comments

[muccamukk]

All of my messages are collapsed by default making reading longer as I have to click to expand each one. There doesn't seem to be a setting to expand them all, or to have them all expanded by default.

Post title clipping to the next line is kind of awkward. I have a post called "E-mail just sent to my supervisor." and it rolls over to the next line in the middle of the word supervisor, variously:

sup
ervisor

superviso
r

supervi
sor

I guess programming syllable recognition is kind of a lot, especially given how many languages DW runs on, and forcing new words onto a new line doesn't work given people title posts things like "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!" not infrequently, however, it still looks pretty awkward.

As always, having "Entries and Comments" together as a category makes the inbox less useful than it could be. Could not Entries be one item choice, and comments another?

[momijizukamori]

Oh whoops, I thought we merged in the fix for the 'read show up as collapsed' thing but it must've been a hotfix. I'll add that too the list! Along with the the weird linebreaking.

No guarantees on splitting the categories, but I'll look into what it would take!

[montuos]

I have a couple of feedback items so far in "it's different".

On the good side, I definitely appreciate having the option to click a specific page instead of endlessly clicking "Next Page" to get to older notifications! Thank you! <3

On the less comfortable side, I miss the safe feeling of "Delete Selected", and I'm a little afraid to test clicking "Delete" even with nothing selected. I think it probably won't take me too long to get used to "Delete" instead of "Delete Selected", but... :shrug: Right now, it's a thing.

I'm also not sure I quite like the font size, and I think this is important enough to suggest changing it. It's significantly larger than other site pages, so for instance, if I use ctrl- twice to shrink the inbox page until I have the same number of notifications showing on my screen as the old inbox, then the main screen and other site pages become unreadably small.

Ideally for this kind of list situation, I'd like to see a default/comfortable/compact setting on this page like Gmail has, but I do know decision fatigue is a thing, so please at least match the font sizes to the main site page.

[momijizukamori]

Yeah, adding better pagination was a big goal - glad it's helping!

I will.. contemplate button wording. The number of buttons in one area makes it tricky, space-wise, but I need to sit and work on that bit of the UI anyway, I think.

The font size should be the same as all of our 'new-style' pages. There's also slightly more padding built into the layouts, and tweaking *that* may be a possibility.

[thistleingrey]

Caveat: I use Firefox on Windows, and I understand that Firefox may have too little share for full support.

1 I can unfold unread *messages* to see their content (tried under both All and Messages), but InboxItem_Controls isn't available somehow for read messages--can't unfold those or flag them. Thus I also can't get the reply/spam action links in InboxItem_Content unless I inspect.

That's specific to messages for me--comments work fine. If I mark the message as unread, the controls work. If I then re-mark the message as read, the controls become flat images again, no select.

2 A tiny bug: the secondary alert-box asking us to report bugs on the beta inbox page says,
If you notice any problems, please report them in . To turn off

I can't tell whether in . is just empty (fine) or choked on invoking the comm name (not fine if it's a general issue with the page).

3 It'd be great to have a little more padding between the item and time detail columns.

4 Smallish: selecting a comment's check box and choosing Delete deletes the comment--but the Delete button remains highlighted. If I mouse over another button, its highlight comes and goes correctly; Delete still remains highlighted. :)

[momijizukamori]

I am primarily a Firefox user myself! So not weird Firefox behavior, just garden variety bugs. I'll see if I can reproduce the behavior you're seeing in 1), which sounds like some JS shenanigans (possibly 4 too)

I will also see what's up with missing community name - I suspect that's a bad text string somewhere rather than a rendering error. And padding is under consideration!

[bluedreaming]

Feedback from a mobile user:
- As otherwise mentioned, the font size does feel bigger than other dw pages, which is especially noticeable since mobile already has a small screen. My mobile browser reduces zoom in a step to 85%; I can’t tell if that’s about the same as other site pages or too far, but it’s still easier to read.
+ the fact that the inbox actually fits the width of the screen, with collapsible filters, is a massive plus!
- while it’s better than the previous non-mobile-optimized sizing (where the > was much smaller) the > to expand a message is still really small and hard to hit.
- maybe it’s more noticeable because of the smaller screen, but the words break oddly, including one line that has the “o” and then the next line has the “n” (for the two-letter word “on”).

Also, seconding the request to separate entries and comments!

[momijizukamori]

Font size is actually the same as all the other 'new-style' pages (which is more and more of the site) - there's also more padding, too, which may be tweakable. I'll also contemplate if there's a way to make a better expand target for messages (particularly in conjunction with the old 'clicking anywhere on a message checks it' behavior, because that would have otherwise been my first go-to for expand/collapse...)

The weird mid-word breaks will also get addressed!

[alexseanchai]

"You are beta-testing the new Inbox page. If you notice any problems, please report them in ."

like I know what goes there but it's not there

my tablet screen in portrait mode and my phone screen in landscape mode are both wide enough the folders don't move themselves into a collapsible above the messages like they do on my phone in portrait mode, which means the folders column eats like a third of the screen. the messages column consequently feels uncomfortably narrow, especially with the font being so much larger than Tropo Purple's on the rest of the site.

Firefox Nightly for Android, both devices

my original notification for this comment is above my first edit notification; I'm expecting it to be below my second edit notification, since the previous two have the same timestamp at precise-to-the-minute and this will be later; if I don't immediately add a third edit notif, then that expectation panned out

update: yeah, it's sorting by precise-to-the-minute timestamps so the only ones out of reverse chronological order are the original and first edit, both showing at 12:28 my time, but also now I'm on Firefox for Windows with a much wider screen and wow that font got big

[momijizukamori]

The font is actually the same size as all the other 'new-style' pages - there's more padding too, though, which may be affecting perception. I will investigate the media query stuff so that it rearranges itself at a more helpful screen size.

Did the old inbox sort by second for order?

[theladyscribe]

A couple initial thoughts. I'm using the latest version of Opera on a Macbook Air.

- Seconding the above issue with text wrapping in the subject lines of the threads.
- Things feel a bit cramped, which may be partially due to the text wrapping issue. Some extra spacing between the subject line and the timestamp section might help this (and make both the subject line and timestamp a little easier to parse).
- I'd personally like a little more color contrast or borders between inbox messages. I'm using the default site skin, so it's alternating light gray/dark gray. The lighter gray messages especially sort of blend into the page itself.
- I'm not sure how I feel about the navigation buttons being between the Mark Read/Mark Unread/Delete and Mark All Read/Delete All buttons. Would it be possible to have the navigation buttons on a separate line and the action buttons either above or below them? In addition, there's a single navigation button below all of the others, which bothers me aesthetically, especially because it's not centered (I actually didn't notice it at first, but it's right below the p1 button).
- There's no space between the "Delete" button and the page 1 button (or the arrow button if you click to another page of messages). The spacing between the page buttons and between the Mark Read/Mark Unread/Delete buttons is fine.
- Is it possible to add the navigation/action bar as a footer in addition to having it as a header?

[momijizukamori]

Yeah, the buttons arrangement was kind of a 'best first attempt', but there's just too many edge cases where there's not enough space or they start wrapping strangely, and I think they're going to to need rearranging. Extra copy of the buttons bar at the bottom is definitely doable! I think I actually meant to (as the old version had buttons both places) and then - forgot?

Will def look into the the text wrapping and spacing issues!

[morrow]

To me the button boxes seem unnecessarily overly padded (Chrome on iPhone) :S

[momijizukamori]

They've got the same amount of padding that all the 'new-style' pages have on buttons - I do realize that's more than the old set-up had, though!

[kalloway]

As someone who really needs to do a good inbox weeding, the spacing on the page numbers/arrows is going to drive me batty:





Using Windows/Firefox, if I make the window bigger I just get more white on the left and right, so I can't get the page numbers all on one line. It's not breaking anything but it's really ugly and I'd maybe suggest moving them onto their own line beneath the buttons or changing a size somewhere.



Also the visited-link color for tropo-purple (and tropo-red) has really poor contrast with the button. I might actually argue the red is worse.

[momijizukamori]

Yeah the navigation fit JUST right when I was testing in my development environment, but that account only had 31 pages of inbox stuff and it turns out there are just too many situations where it no longer fits just right and wraps and it's driving me batty too. Gonna be a Reckoning with that bar.

Visited link text is a bug, it should be the same as the unvisited-link version (so white in both Tropos). Probably a CSS inheritance issue somewhere.

[kalloway]

I (Windows/Firefox) also am having a problem where - only with marked-read PMs - I cannot expand them until I click and mark them unread. Read comments seem to be working fine.

(I am trying to clean out my inbox now that everyone knows how bad it is!)

[calliopes_pen]

I came here to say that I was having this exact same problem. So far as I can see, this is the only issue for me so far.

(And thank you for mentioning the temporary fix with expanding, because I had wondered.)

[kalloway]

One more thing! (Sorry!)

I have some messages from deleted accounts that are behaving different in regards to icons displayed (or not). I'm guessing this has to do with the deleted account having had a default icon or not?





Not sure if there's anything to be done about it, tbh.

[momijizukamori]

I'll look into it! But yeah, that might end up being a weird edge case.

Expanson arrow/triangle not working on some messages.

[siderea]

Just tried the beta inbox, and the triangle/arrow buttons on already seen messages that are folded don't work, i.e. clicking on them doesn't expand the folded message. FF 104.0.2 on a Mac running 12.4 (21F79).

Also, I had a lot of trouble turning off beta once I'd tried it. I don't know what I did that finally worked, but for about five minutes there I had the beta page telling me I didn't have the beta inbox on, while I most definitely had the beta inbox on.

Re: Expanson arrow/triangle not working on some messages.

[kalloway]

Just tried the beta inbox, and the triangle/arrow buttons on already seen messages that are folded don't work, i.e. clicking on them doesn't expand the folded message. FF 104.0.2 on a Mac running 12.4 (21F79).

Is it only on already-read PMs? (But already-read comments behave as they should?) If so, I reported the same thing two comments above but on Windows/Firefox so it's apparently universal.

[thistleingrey]

This is more a nice-to-have request than a bug: it'd be great if the inbox count in the upper right corner could auto-update, eventually. It's correct after I hard-refresh the page.

Really glad that read messages now unfold/fold--seems a bunch of us noticed that! Thank you.

[momijizukamori]

I think that might be out of scope for this particular beta, but I'll file it away to look at later!

[ladyasul]

bringing my list of Noticed Stuff About The New Inbox here:

- on the left column (the filter-by options list), there seems to be a bit of a gap between the "Circle Updates" and "Birthdays" line items. is that intentional? (is this just my laptop being fruggy?)

- not only were inbox items/notifs selectable by clicking anywhere in the notif itself in the Old Inbox, but the Old Inbox would indicate that the item was selected by changing the item's bg color; New Inbox doesn't change any bg colors to indicate it, and you just have to tell by whether the ticky box is tickied or not. would it be easy enough to re-implement this? it's super convenient, when it comes to the more verbose items, for seeing whether it's selected or not, if you're down at the bottom already. also convenient, to be able to select it while at the bottom, while the top of it is up out of view....

- Old Inbox had a bit of a horizontal border/visual divider between items, for slightly more visual distinction than the somewhat subtly alternating background colors; New Inbox does not. might be nice to add this back in?

- the ticky-box at the very bottom of the column of notif items doesn't do anything. the one above the notif items works just fine, though! (I mean, the ticky-boxes meant to be Select All ticky-boxes)

- re: the buttons left and right of the page numbers: New Inbox's buttons have smaller font sizes and bigger padding between the text and button borders. while I recognize that this brings it more in line with the rest of the Tropo pages (I'm in Tropo Purple, if that makes any difference?) the new buttons aren't quite as easy to look at, with my usual situation (browser settings, laptop position, etc...) would it be possible to make the buttons' text just a little bigger, and the buttons slightly smaller around it? ...to keep the buttons overall about the same size, or even a touch smaller?

- same area: I love how the page numbers pop up above the buttons around them, when the browser window is narrowed past a certain point! it really does look great like that, whether that was intentional or just serendipitous!

- same again: when the page is widened, and those bottom/top areas have the page numbers in the center, with buttons to their left and right, there doesn't seem to be any meaningful padding/margin between the numbers and the buttons. the page-numbers-as-buttons press right up against the buttons a little funny. would it do bad things to the layout, to add just a few pixels' worth of padding or margin, between .pages and .actions/.actions-all? (should I do a mockup later, when I'm more awake? I feel like maybe I should do a mockup. brain no wordsing English real gud right now.)

- only "unread" PM messages can be expanded/collapsed by the little triangle in the upper-left corner, by the flag. "Entries and Comments" notif items, as well as other types, are expandable when already marked read, however. it's just the PM message items that look to be misbehaving. (someone else reported what I believe is this, in a comment just above.)

- similarly, messages/PMs can only be flagged when Unread.

flag a PM item, sort by "flagged" items, and it doesn't really change anything; the entries/comments items behave as expected there too, but the PMs still don't, if they're marked-read. I can't expand them by the triangle button, and I still can't unflag them, to dismiss them from the view....

in fact, I can make the PM items behave or ignore me, very reliably, by marking them as read or unread. (at least their individual ticky-boxes behave right, which enables me to quickly make them behave or ignore me, to test this....)


uh... right, I should drop this in: am in Chrome, on both Win 10 and Win 7.

scrambling to get ready to head out for a bit; will read other comments and try testing more things when I find additional brain cells and time. DW rules.

[momijizukamori]

Thanks for for catching that issue with the bottom check-all box! And the spacing extra space on the side bar list, which I thought I had tackled and apparently had not. Everything else is a known issue - particularly the spacing issues with the top bar when everything is on one row (or trying to be on row, anyway).

[ecosophia]

I have 100% moderation on comments. Every time I click the yellow button to put a comment through, it takes me to a page asking "Do you want to put this comment through?" I have to click yes, wait for it to go through, and then go back to the inbox. Before this I just clicked on the yellow button and the comment went through. I would prefer the previous approach as it saves a lot of time when I have a long string of comments to moderate!

[ecosophia]

Here's a link to the page it takes me to:

https://www.dreamwidth.org/talkscreen?mode=unscreen&journal=ecosophia&talkid=35162535

The text on the page is:

Change Comment Status
Unscreen this comment?
Are you sure you want to unscreen this comment?
[Yes, unscreen this comment]

[ravenna]

hello hello! thanks for letting us provide feedback!

in addition to known issues concerns: in the current live inbox, when you hover your cursor over the navigation tree, it highlights your current hover selection. in the beta, just the text color changes.. sssoort of. it's not very visible and i miss the handy intuitive hover highlight.

also, in tropo red at least, the big bar of the pink highlight color in there behind the chunky red buttons is just kind of unappealing, visually. i know this is probably just a personal taste thing, but to me it looks like you accidentally made it that pink color due to how prominent it is. given how tidy and largely muted the currently live inbox design is, the change is jarring. overall it feels like there's not enough contrast where there should be and too much contrast where it's not needed, which makes viewing the inbox and sorting through it feel muddy and like i'm going to lose my place visually pretty easy.

looking forward to seeing how it develops!

[momijizukamori]

Thanks for the feedback!

[lassarina]

I might be misremembering the old behavior, but I poked at the beta a little bit this afternoon and noticed that if I select a few messages and click Mark Read, the messages are then de-selected. The behavior I expected was that the messages would become read but remain selected in case I wanted to do an additional action (such as delete.) Maybe my expectations are wrong, just wanted to comment on it.

[momijizukamori]

I'll check the behavior against the old inbox, might be a bug.

[vriddy]

I think there's a counting or display issue: I have several pages of unread messages, and the message at the end of the page also shows up at the top of the next one (which is confusing, as I think I received something new or something got deleted when I'm jumping back and forth.)

Thank you for the work on the redesign!

[momijizukamori]

Oops, yep, you're right! Curse those off-by-one errors (which I'm guessing is what this is)

[angeburgers]

dusts off this ancient journal

I haven't encountered any major bugs so these two are just things I've noticed over time while messing with the beta. Overall it's very nice, even if the buttons on tropo purple feel too dark. But main things

Vivaldi 3.5 is the browser, which is a chromium ripoff so just loop it under "Chrome, but with vertical tabs and some weird busted code in it"

1) On the left, above the big "New Message" button is the Refresh and Manage settings. The problem is on my browser they're essentially right on top of each other by barely a pixel, so attempt to click anything just automatically hits the New Message button. Pic of what I mean. If there's any way to turn the Refresh/Manage into buttons, or just move them somewhere else it'd be fine.

2) My eyes are all kinds of jank and can't see contrast well, so having new messages having bold headers in the old inbox was really nice. I think it kind of grays out some of the text for read ones? But it's not enough to differentiate any of the text for my jank eyes and it's causing migraines to look at the new inbox for too long.

I have to swap back to the old one for eye reasons, but I'm genuine loving the new inbox so far. Thanks for all the hard work o/

[momijizukamori]

Oh, someone on discord mentioned the lack of space between the links and the button, and then I forgot to write it down so it slipped out of my mind again - thanks! You're also not the first person to bring up contrast issues, so I will think on how we can improve that.

[we_are_spc]

When I read messages (or anything else for that matter), the number of unread items doesn't change or go down. IE, I know I read 2 Items yesterday, but it still says 462, but when something else comes in it'll go up to 463..

When I hit "delete all in subfolder" the usual popup doesn't appear with the confirmation.

Everything else we've noticed has already been addressed in the fixed/known issues.

-T^SPC

[momijizukamori]

I'll look into the message count thing! The missing 'Delete All' confirmation is also a known issue, I've added it to the list.

[alexseanchai]

I just figured out what was bothering me about Delete All: it's no longer asking if I'm sure I want to delete everything except flagged items; is this intentional or does that double-check need put back in?

[momijizukamori]

Needs to be readded!

[kate_nepveu]

This is not a problem, but I would very much like the confirm dialogue back for Delete All.

[momijizukamori]

Eh, it's a missing feature, and it wasn't removed intentionally, so it counts :)

small bug report? unread notification number not updating

[satsuma]

Hi! The last few times I've used tickboxes to mark things as read I've noticed that the number of unread items doesn't get updated in the interface (for example just now i had three unread comments, i selected two via tickboxes and hit 'mark read'. the comments themselves updated to look like read items as expected, but the indicators in the inbox sidebar & the top menu bar all still read (3))

besides that I'm liking the new inbox! I would prefer the cluttered inbox to having buttons change function, personally. That seems incredibly prone to producing misclicks

eta: I'm running firebox 105.0.1 on a macbook & my site theme is Celerity if either of those end up being relevant to reproducing this bug. As far as I know I don't have anything running that would interfere with JavaScript

[alexseanchai]

Is the clickable range for the menu links supposed to extend far enough right I can click Site Notices by mistake when aiming for the flag?

[momijizukamori]

are you still getting this on the newest beta? I was not able to reproduce.

[maserannas]

Just noting a few things while on mobile, Android with duckduckgo browser:

The padding for the entries in inbox on the left feels really thin, making it harder to read because it's so close to the left side of the screen. On desktop there's the appearance of more padding because there's a visual indentation where the checkbox has a blank column underneath, and text starts to the right of that "blank" space. Would there be a way to add padding of, I don't know, even five pixels to the left side of the inbox entries when in mobile viewing?

Also a general question: I'm the current inbox, if you select any of the links from an inbox entry (reply/link/parent), that entry would be marked as read. On the beta inbox, the only change is the (reply/link/parent) link changing color to indicate it's been selected. Will there be any automatic marking as read of an inbox entry after selecting one of those links?

Also, will the beta inbox be able to automatically refresh itself after deleting one or more inbox entries, like the current inbox does? I have to manually refresh every time in order to see an updated count of what's unread in my inbox, both on mobile and desktop. It's a little less obvious on mobile because it's hidden in two expandable menus, but still visibly doesn't update until you refresh the page manually (by selecting the refresh link or just refreshing the page from browser menu).

Edit for another small thing: right now when there's nothing in inbox, the top and bottom button bars become one large square of color and buttons in troposphere. Will there end up being some blank space inserted inbetween the two, to leave them visually separate? Or even something noting the inbox is empty (or you have no messages, nothing under that entry, whatever filtering you've done)? More akin to what is an empty placeholder in the current inbox.

Thank you, and thank you for all your hard work!

[momijizukamori]

I swear, every time I do one of these page conversions, users end up telling me about all sorts of features and use cases I had had no idea of. Having the entry count update properly is already merged (though not released yet). I'll see if I can figure out what the old inbox is doing to mark as read on link clicks (because I don't believe it does if you open the link in a new tab? Which is why I never noticed it before), as well as see about those other UI tweaks.

[bluedreaming]

I’m in beta inbox and canary and if I delete something, the folders won’t expand unless I refresh the window. (I hope I didn’t miss that in known issues.) (iOS 15 up to date using safari)

[momijizukamori]

Oh I bet that's an accidental side effect of the fix to have the folder message count update on delete - thanks for the catch!