[RFC|Merged] notification box

[Pony99CA]

I assume this will also include a set of user preferences whether they prefer to get email notifications, alerts or neither for each item (subscriptions etc.)?

I would keep them like they are today -- optional E-mail and/or Jabber subscriptions and an optional pop-up for PMs, but notifications would always be on. If they're unobtrusive (icons with numbers), there's no reason to turn them off.

If they used a pop-up window, like PMs, that's when you need an option to turn that off.

AFAIK, PMs generate an "alert"/"notification", so I actually don't see the need for the unread count. I was simply wondering if we should remove the link to the inbox from the index.

They shouldn't generate an alert, though - it is invasive as hell.

How? How is getting a notification about a new PM any different than seeing a non-zero number in the "X new messages" area? Or am I misunderstanding you?

Callum may be talking about the pop-up window, but that can be turned off by the user.

Steve

[EXreaction]

Plus take into consideration, that "read" at FB means you hover over notification. After that, ajax request is sent to mark notification read, and background changes to white. It is great advantage, because you can easily mark notifications read and find them later, as there are still last 5 notifications shown (but they do not interrupt you by blinking, displaying in page title, etc.).

What would be more preferable, hovering over the item to mark it read or having to either visit the page or click some button on the notifications flyout to mark something unread if you don't want to view it? I would think the latter would be more preferable just so you do not mark things read that you want to read later.

I think notification options in a single centralized section would be nicer, similar to:
download/file.php?id=1931&mode=view

As far as the list of notifications that are displayed, I cannot decide what method is best:

Min 5 notifications, max 20, show back to the last unread notification
Min 5 notifications, max 20, show only unread notifications beyond the last 5
Show 5 notifications, have another flyout menu you can load through the notifications flyout that would display all unread notifications

[EXreaction]

Actually, that's not the way Facebook marks notifications as read. What it seems to do is just mark everything as read after you open the notifications menu. That is definitely not wanted for this.

[EXreaction]

I think I'll leave how the subscription system is setup and works now, other than the part where it actually sends notifications, which will go through this system instead. Originally I intended to pull out the old subscriptions system and have it use the notifications system, but right now I am thinking that would be a lot of work for very little reward (just cleaning up old code).

In the UCP you'll be able to set a notifications method for topic and forum subscriptions, like it appears in the screenshot from IP Board, and it'll notify you via that method for all of them.

[Pony99CA]

Plus take into consideration, that "read" at FB means you hover over notification. After that, ajax request is sent to mark notification read, and background changes to white. It is great advantage, because you can easily mark notifications read and find them later, as there are still last 5 notifications shown (but they do not interrupt you by blinking, displaying in page title, etc.).

What would be more preferable, hovering over the item to mark it read or having to either visit the page or click some button on the notifications flyout to mark something unread if you don't want to view it? I would think the latter would be more preferable just so you do not mark things read that you want to read later.

I agree with the latter.

I think notification options in a single centralized section would be nicer, similar to:
download/file.php?id=1931&mode=view

Why would somebody not want in-board notifications? They're not pop-ups, right?

As far as the list of notifications that are displayed, I cannot decide what method is best:

Min 5 notifications, max 20, show back to the last unread notification
Min 5 notifications, max 20, show only unread notifications beyond the last 5
Show 5 notifications, have another flyout menu you can load through the notifications flyout that would display all unread notifications

What about Min 0, Max 20 with scrolling? I don't know that I'd want to see previously read notifications, but I suppose that could be a user option.

Steve

[EXreaction]

Some things users might not want notifications for. For example, one thing that's on the to-do list is notifications when someone quotes or tags a user. Someone might not want to be notified always when that happens, so they can disable that notification if they want.

By default a user would receive notifications for everything, and would decide not to receive certain types of notifications if that's what they want.

[EXreaction]

Another update:

I do not think that user tagging is going to be a feasible core notification. Because of the variety of options usernames can have, it's difficult to generate a regular expression that can extract a username from a text unless the username is surrounded by some sort of markers. This should be done with some ajax that searches for users once you start typing a name or something and can insert it as a bbcode (or something recognizable with a simple regular expression).

[emosbat]

very nice. how about show it as a toolbar in bottom of page?

[imkingdavid]

Another update:

I do not think that user tagging is going to be a feasible core notification. Because of the variety of options usernames can have, it's difficult to generate a regular expression that can extract a username from a text unless the username is surrounded by some sort of markers. This should be done with some ajax that searches for users once you start typing a name or something and can insert it as a bbcode (or something recognizable with a simple regular expression).

Is it too difficult for regex to match @imkingdavid? But I agree it might be a bit difficult to properly implement mentions.

[Senky]

It was discussed here:
[RFC] Ability to @mention specific users in posts
you can read why it is quite hard to implement (because phpBB allows quite rich format of nicknames to be used, including "@").