The latest site feature that I've wanted to replace with a new implementation that will be easier to maintain is the private messaging system. To that end, here's that thing I said:

https://www.cemetech.net/messages/


For the moment it's a completely separate system from the existing private messages; I want to set y'all loose on it to shake out things that should be changed, and would move everything to this system later (including copying your old messages into the new system). So mess with it and post your feedback here!
I couldn't resist trying to send a message with a good old emoji 🤷‍♂️ and it worked fine Smile

utf8mb4 (or similar) ftw
Why can't I send a message to myself Sad

Also this is pretty slick, I really like the auto-complete for the username compared to the current style -- but it seems a little less responsive than I would expect. Still awesome.

Not sure if I like the "outbox" concept -- I get that it is a common email term and whatnot, but I feel like just marking it as sent and showing when it was opened by the recepient would be nicer. (Edit: wait I think this is actually how it works so yay apparently I should test things)
MateoConLechuga wrote:
Why can't I send a message to myself Sad
It's deliberately disabled because the only legitimate use for doing that I can think of would be for testing whereas I can imagine somebody might try to use it to keep notes to themselves or something that I would rather not enable.

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Also this is pretty slick, I really like the auto-complete for the username compared to the current style -- but it seems a little less responsive than I would expect. Still awesome.
Do you mean it's slower to autofill than you'd like? It seems pretty quick to me, even with a few hundred milliseconds of network latency.

Quote:
Not sure if I like the "outbox" concept -- I get that it is a common email term and whatnot, but I feel like just marking it as sent and showing when it was opened by the recepient would be nicer. (Edit: wait I think this is actually how it works so yay apparently I should test things)
It's just a list of the messages you've sent, for if you want to refer back to them. Would it be clearer if the title were changed to "Sent messages" or perhaps just "Sent"?
It would be neat if the users were sorted by either total number of posts, or time since last post, so that it's faster to find active users with only a few keypresses.

From the lack of a preview button, I'm guessing that it doesn't support BBcode? Not that there's really much need for that in a message only one person will see.

Completely filling the message field with multiple copies of the bee movie script a long message gives an error: Ensure this value has at most 65535 characters (it has 70938).. Not sure what's causing that, the field has a max length set.
I second that the word "outbox" is less than intuitive, especially considering the function of the outbox in the current iteration, which functions more as a "unread/unopened"-box. I'd like to see this functionality here with read receipts/markers, which I don't see currently (unless cbg read my test message instantly).

When responding to a message I have received, it is jarring and unhelpful for me to see that the message was addressed to me- I'd rather see who the message was from in the original message text:
Maybe I'm not using it right, but the To: box doesn't seem to work in Safari.


Also the console returns an error in autocomplete_light/autocomplete_light.min.8172b0a59e37.js (Also only in Safari, the like, one browser that I tried it in.)
_iPhoenix_ wrote:
I second that the word "outbox" is less than intuitive
I've changed it to just "Sent".

Quote:
When responding to a message I have received, it is jarring and unhelpful for me to see that the message was addressed to me- I'd rather see who the message was from in the original message text:
It now shows both.

Quote:
Maybe I'm not using it right, but the To: box doesn't seem to work in Safari.
That seems to have been an upstream bug which should now be fixed.
Just a feature I think would be helpful: Rather than having "Outbox" and "Sent" categories, would it be possible to have all sent messages go to "Sent" and then being able to see in the message itself if it had been read yet? This could be with the other information, e.g,

To: <Name>
From: <Name>
Date Sent: <Time>
Read Status: <Read/Unread>

TIny_Hacker goes off to test

Edit:
I tested it out and only one thing seemed a little bit off. After I sent my message, I went into "Sent" to view it and noticed that it said "Return to Outbox".Maybe this should be changed to something like "Back" for consistency?

Also, while I'm thinking about it, here are two issues I've been having with the current Posting/Editing system:
When you edit a post, there's no option for cancel, only "Submit" and "Preview" (I know that there are plenty of ways to cancel editing but for some reason this just seems a little odd).
Also, I've noticed that a lot of things say "HTML is OFF", "BBCode is ON", blah blah blah, but I've never actually seen anywhere that HTML was ON, so is it really necessary to show that at all?

End of Off-Topic rant
Quote:
Also, I've noticed that a lot of things say "HTML is OFF", "BBCode is ON", blah blah blah, but I've never actually seen anywhere that HTML was ON, so is it really necessary to show that at all?
phpBB (the forum software deep underneath a decreasingly large part of Cemetech) permits administrators to allow HTML and/or BBCode (or neither) for posts and messages. For obvious reasons HTML is not allowed here, but that's an artifact of phpBB having a toggle for it.
Please make the tabs themselves clickable, and not just the links.
TIny_Hacker wrote:
I went into "Sent" to view it and noticed that it said "Return to Outbox".Maybe this should be changed to something like "Back" for consistency?
There were a few instances of "outbox" left that I've changed now.

Quote:
Please make the tabs themselves clickable, and not just the links.
Done.
  
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