Notification Feedback

[Bartosz Misiak]

The newest changes are perfect. :thumbsup:
I'm a little confused about marking them read though. You said they are not marked read if you click the content link. Doesn't opening the notifications menu or showing their content in a modal popup mark them read in the first place?

Also:

Notify me of comments made on my profile

Notify me of comments made on my profile pending approval

Notify me when someone adds me as a friend

Notify me when I have a pending friend request

I know default notification options are changeable, but IPS has set these notification types to Private Conversation. I haven't got a lot of notifications yet and so I wonder what are the advantages of setting it so. What is the real difference between an inline notification and PC?
I'm asking because I don't see a reason to create a new conversation for such a simple notification, unless their behavior differs significantly.
Inline notifications don't trigger popups?

[dr. Jekyll]

I think these changes, and a few other tweaks we're working on, should hopefully help deliver a more useful feature and experience.

Brandon congratulations, you have understood perfectly our suggestions. :thumbsup:

It's a really good job. It will be difficult to improve it further.

I just did not understand one thing, in the usercp notifications log can I see which topic (title or URL) the notification belongs without clicking on it? :)

[Luke]

It's an improvement. I'll have to try it before giving more feedback. The magnifying glass icon seems a bit busy. Perhaps you can make the custom icon clickable on both the list and drop down to serve that purpose, and give notifications with no icon a default one.

Would like to see the "new messages" number and the notifications number combined. Don't care which style is kept, just having both seems a bit redundant.

[Nimdock]

Excellent changes. And yeah please do NOT get rid of the drop down menu telling you what the different notifications are; that's actually quite useful.

Very nice.


Any way it can let you know that there are new users that need admin approval? I mean for the cases when email and manual admin approval are active for registration. Sometimes I forget to check my ACP, hehe. I think one for every user that needs approval might be a bit much. But let's say, if there is at least one, then show "(x) user(s) waiting for admin approval" or something, just an idea. :)


And if that's already there and I didn't notice, sorry, hehe. :blush:

[dr. Jekyll]

Excellent changes. And yeah please do NOT get rid of the drop down menu telling you what the different notifications are; that's actually quite useful.

Very nice.

I agree with you, thanks to the "saved notification" page the system is perfect as it is on Brandon's proposal

Any way it can let you know that there are new users that need admin approval? I mean for the cases when email and manual admin approval are active for registration. Sometimes I forget to check my ACP, hehe. I think one for every user that needs approval might be a bit much. But let's say, if there is at least one, then show "(x) user(s) waiting for admin approval" or something, just an idea. :)

This is a great idea, I wish i had it

[ChrisJB]

Doesn't work in Chrome :(

[ChrisJB]

Doesn't work in Chrome :(

Sorted, cleared me Cache.

Only new suggestion I would make would be the roll over background color to a less sutle grey / blue rather than the dark green I know the green is trying to keep in with the IPB theme but its very hard to read the dark text when the background color changes to the dark green.

Well done to IPB though for listening - very much improved, now for the links to take you to the source of the notification and I think its all sorted. :)

[ChrisJB]

Also not sure If this has been mentioned but do I need a notification to say I have a Private Message, surely the number next to my small profile picture is a notification for this?

:)

[Strike X]

This is the updated menu.

• Again, you'll notice context sensitive titles with appropriately linked strings.
• While you can't see it in the screenshot, the topic title is now shown in new reply and new topic notifications (it is truncated if over 50 characters)
• Some minor bugs fixed, such as dual numbers on the menu overlapping the down arrow, etc.

Much better :) well done!

What happen if you click on any link from the menu (apart from 'view all')?

Does it direct to Notifications Page (I hope not) or specific thread, reply, status, etc.

[bfarber]

Phew, lots of posts here.

The newest changes are perfect. :thumbsup:

I'm a little confused about marking them read though. You said they are not marked read if you click the content link. Doesn't opening the notifications menu or showing their content in a modal popup mark them read in the first place?

Also:

I know default notification options are changeable, but IPS has set these notification types to Private Conversation. I haven't got a lot of notifications yet and so I wonder what are the advantages of setting it so. What is the real difference between an inline notification and PC?

I'm asking because I don't see a reason to create a new conversation for such a simple notification, unless their behavior differs significantly.

Inline notifications don't trigger popups?

Opening the menu does mark them all as read, yes. Viewing the notification in the popup does not, unless you click "Mark Read" button for the notification in the popup.

Those notifications are set private conversation primarily because that was the main notification method prior to this new system being implemented. You use to be able to get a PM notification for those particular areas, so that's what it does by default. Of course, you can change the default as an admin under the Member tab (you control all the notification defaults), and each user can then further customize how they want to receive notifications as well. Thus, you have the control.

I just did not understand one thing, in the usercp notifications log can I see which topic (title or URL) the notification belongs without clicking on it? :)

The title in the log will appear as it does in the menu. i.e.

<a href='#'>test</a> has replied to <a href='#'>topic x</a>

This is the reason for the magnifying glass icon in the screenshot linking to the notification itself - the actual title will be linking to the content you are being notified about, so we needed to add some other way to link into the notification.

It's an improvement. I'll have to try it before giving more feedback. The magnifying glass icon seems a bit busy. Perhaps you can make the custom icon clickable on both the list and drop down to serve that purpose, and give notifications with no icon a default one.

Would like to see the "new messages" number and the notifications number combined. Don't care which style is kept, just having both seems a bit redundant.

Understood about the magnifying glass icon, though I'm sure you can also see the dilemma as well. I can say that Rikki hasn't played much with the new layout so it's possible he may change how it appears.

I thought about just using the custom icon, but that was designed to take you to the source content, so we'd want some way to view the notification itself still. This is something we can think about further, though no promises yet.

And we somewhat feel the same way about the new messages number. Rikki is working out some possible changes for a future version to clean up that area, though I wouldn't expect them in 3.1. We're looking at longer term changes for the header as a whole, as a few other small issues crop up too.

Any way it can let you know that there are new users that need admin approval? I mean for the cases when email and manual admin approval are active for registration. Sometimes I forget to check my ACP, hehe. I think one for every user that needs approval might be a bit much. But let's say, if there is at least one, then show "(x) user(s) waiting for admin approval" or something, just an idea. :)

And if that's already there and I didn't notice, sorry, hehe. :blush:

I was going to try to implement this, however it's not that easy. IPB currently emails the email set in the ACP, not a particular member, so there's no easy way to necessarily issue a "notification" inside IPB for this (there's no guarantee there's a user account with the same email address as specified in the ACP, or at the least that it's a user account you actually use, as opposed to some generic "Site News" account for instance). Unfortunately, that particular email alert isn't suitable for notifications, without changing how it works.

Only new suggestion I would make would be the roll over background color to a less sutle grey / blue rather than the dark green I know the green is trying to keep in with the IPB theme but its very hard to read the dark text when the background color changes to the dark green.

The text is white on rollover now. That was a bug. The reason it's styled as it is now is to keep in line with the username dropdown that already exists (click your username, then rollover the list items).

Also not sure If this has been mentioned but do I need a notification to say I have a Private Message, surely the number next to my small profile picture is a notification for this?

:)

You can shut off inline notifications for private messages in your user control panel. The control is yours. The benefit is that you can have inline notifications issue a popup, keeping in line with how IPB 3.0 and earlier worked when you receive a new PM.

Much better :) well done!

What happen if you click on any link from the menu (apart from 'view all')?

Does it direct to Notifications Page (I hope not) or specific thread, reply, status, etc.

You'll see the titles aren't just one long link now for the most part. See my code example earlier in this post, for instance. If you clicked "test" in that example, you would go to his profile, and "topic x" would take you to the topic you are being notified about.

[ChrisJB]

Phew, lots of posts here.

The text is white on rollover now. That was a bug. The reason it's styled as it is now is to keep in line with the username dropdown that already exists (click your username, then rollover the list items).

You can shut off inline notifications for private messages in your user control panel. The control is yours. The benefit is that you can have inline notifications issue a popup, keeping in line with how IPB 3.0 and earlier worked when you receive a new PM.

That's great - thanks for clearing that up Brandon.

:)

[Daddylicious]

Wow... no replies since April? I hate to revive a dead topic, but I'm finding myself very frustrated with the Notifications Menu, specifically.

Was there ever a decision on including "delete" buttons or checkboxes to delete from the notifications menu? That would be very helpful

Currently the dropdown menu looks like:

USER X has started a new personal conversation with you
USER Y has replied to a personal conversation
USER Z has replied to a personal conversation

I think it would be more helpful to format the menu to look like:
USER X has started "I have a question"
USER Y has replied to "Need Help with..."
USER Z has replied to "Taking a vacation..."

And I think it would also be helpful for the notifications menu to only display new notifications. It currently doesn't seem to have any way to distinguish new notifications from ones you've already read... unless my current skin just wasn't built properly.

And, for the life of me, I can't find the template that controls this dropdown menu itself. I'd like to add a "View all Messages" button at the bottom (similar to the "View all Notifications") that links direct to the messenger. What template would i need to modify to add that?

Thanks in advance!

[Daddylicious]

So I found the template to add the button at the bottom.

(Other Global Templates > notificationList)

So that's fixed.

And I found the string that would need to be modified to change the format of the notification message.

<foreach loop="loopynotify:$notifications as $notify">

		<li class='row1 notify <if test="!$notify['notify_read']">unread</if>'>

			<img src='{$this->settings['img_url']}/notifications/{$notify['notify_icon']}.png' alt='' />

			<p>

				<if test="strpos( $notify['notify_title'], '<a href' ) === false">

					<a href='{parse url="app=core&amp;module=usercp&amp;tab=core&amp;area=viewNotification&amp;do=view&amp;view={$notify['notify_id']}" base="public"}'>

				</if>

				{$notify['notify_title']}

				<if test="strpos( $notify['notify_title'], '<a href' ) === false">

					</a>

				</if>

				<br />

				<span class='desc'>{$this->lang->words['notify__sent']}{parse date="$notify['notify_sent']" format="short"}</span>

			</p>

		</li>

		</foreach>

The question now is... where do I find $notify to try to make the necessary changes?

I'm also going to try to change the icon displayed for the different types of notices (Topics & Posts, Status Updates, Profiles & Friends, Private Messages and Other) ... if that's even possible. :)

[bfarber]

We haven't posted since April because (1) we weren't seeking any further feedback - there's already quite a bit of good feedback here to work with, and (2) we haven't released a major update of IP.Board yet since then.