Private Messages Are GO GO GO!
I’ve finally made private messaging available to all. Verified registered members can access their message box at http://andriasang.com/msg/.
(“Verified” just means that I’ve determined that you’re not a spammer. If you’re a recently registered member, you will not be verified until you’ve posted a comment that convinces me you’re not trying to sell shoes to people. You can also send a message to the site contact form and I’ll probably bump you up.)
Messages are “conversation” based, meaning once you start a message with someone, you’ll see the back-and-forth conversation in the same view. New messages auto load. I’m not sure if this is fast enough for chatting, but you can try!
To start a new conversation, click on the “New” button:
You can enter recipients in the recipient field. Suggestions will be shown through a slightly buggy auto completer.
There’s no limitation on the number of recipients, but I haven’t fully tested out the effects of having masses of recipients, so you may want to limit your messages to just two or three.
For convenience, I’ve also added “send private message” links to the little user profiles in comments.
You’ll only see these links if you’re capable of sending messages. If you don’t see the link, you’re one of 1) not logged in, 2) an unverified member, or 3) you’ve been blocked from sending messages.
The messenger uses such technology as Node.js, WebSockets and the HTML5 history object. History lets you browse your mail box without the page refreshing. The URL bar still changes as you navigate, so you can easily hot link to messages.
Node and WebSockets are used for the real time elements. This is part of a larger real time layer I’ve been adding to the site. I’ll share details in a separate post.
The message system is early, so it may be buggy. The main list view has some known ordering issues, for instance.
If you see another bug, please report it using… the the very messenger that’s not working for you! (If that’s too much irony for you, you can also use the contact form, which is just a plain old HTML text field without the javascript doo-dats.)
Feel free to send me a message to suggest new features. I already have a bunch of things that I hope to add when I get a chance (maybe post Tokyo Game Show-ish), including:
- Move messages to trash, spam and favorites
- Add custom tags
- Open a message or thread in a separate window, viewing as pure text
- A cleaner auto completer for name input
- Add new users to conversations even after the first message has been sent
- Maybe make messages visible to the general public
- Search messages by the sender username
- Open a quick list of latest messages via the mail icon in the top nav bar (this is currently done for alerts).
- Have alerts of new messages forwarded to the e-mail account linked on your account
- Block certain users from contacting you
- Create groups/circles of people for easy mailing
And so forth…