Mahz

Mahz's Dev Journal

on my private PMs it won't let me get into my folders when a click on it the page just refreshes

@DerpyDragonFire

Can you elaborate?

Looking into the half-baked folder system some more right now.

Mahz's Dev Journal

Got a few general enquiries for the new PM management system that I've been thinking about as I know that some of these questions and things may come up.

• When a thread is moved to the trash pile and eventually given the option to delete.
  - What will happen to that thread on the other person's end? Will it be as if it is hidden on the deleted end, but still visible on the other end?
  - If this is the case, what would happen if the second person was to reply? (I'm assuming it still remains open to replies) Would the thread be revived back into the inbox?
  - If it doesn't remain open, I do think that would be weird as you could be having a conversation with someone and a deleted thread would signal a rather abrupt end to the conversation.
• With the folders, how necessary is the need for creating custom folders. Would another and possibly easier option is to have a limited number (eg 10) of folders and then give the ability to just change the title of everything aside from Trash, Inbox and Archive. It would also prevent people from going through and creating 50 different folders and force people to manage their messages better. We have a limited number of boards on the forum that we have to work with so I don't see why that same logic can't be applied to PMs.

@NuttsnBolts

About trashed convos:

>What will happen to that thread on the other person's end? Will it be as if it is hidden on the deleted end, but still visible on the other end? If this is the case, what would happen if the second person was to reply? (I'm assuming it still remains open to replies) Would the thread be revived back into the inbox? If it doesn't remain open, I do think that would be weird as you could be having a conversation with someone and a deleted thread would signal a rather abrupt end to the conversation.

I'm not sure, yet. On one hand, deletion seems like it's purely a personal organization concept so I don't like the idea of necessarily broadcasting "NuttsnBolts deleted this convo". But on the other hand, I don't like the idea of people getting silently ignored when they reply to a convo.

So far it might make most sense to display something like "NuttsnBolts has left the convo" or something.

There are other features I should be focusing on. This one always seems to waste a lot of my brain cycles for what frankly amounts to a rather niche use-case.

>custom folders

I like the idea of having some built-in folders that address the 90% use-case (Inbox | Starred | Archive | Trash) and then allowing customization beyond that. Custom folders are just more complicated.

Similarly, I like the idea of having built-in roleplay tabs (IC | OOC | Chars [Optional] | Chat [Optional] | Dice [Optional]) and then allowing customize beyond that. Customization is the harder engineering feat, of course.

That said, the PM system is something I want to focus more energy towards since about 50% (crazy!) of the Guild's activity is over PMs. I'd like to work out the bugs with the current folder system and then incrementally improve PMs altogether. For example, the convos list really needs real pagination, not [First Page] / [Next Page].

Mahz's Dev Journal

@NuttsnBolts It's hard for me to test this since I haven't seeded my local database with enough fake convos to play with pagination and I don't have the energy to understand my pagination logic atm.

Is there a bug that's limiting your ability to paginate your folders? Can you access all of the convos you've moved so far?

Or is it just a language issue where you're landing on a blank page?

If it's the former (major bug), then I'll figure something out. If it's the latter (just a confusing bug), then I'll leave it til I have time to fix it.

I just pushed up a quick language improvement for the time being ("You're on an empty page" vs "You've moved nothing to this folder yet").

Update: Threw up an info box for now roleplayerguild.com/me/convos

Mahz's Dev Journal

@NuttsnBolts Damn, I need to fix the pagination.

I'm out of energy. If I can't figure out the fix immediately, I'll push up a patch that just makes all convos show up in the "INBOX" tab regardless of what they're assigned to. That way the convo system will be useable in the meantime.

Mahz's Dev Journal

Fixing a bug where it doesn't display the other participants in convos:



Update: Think I got it.

Mahz's Dev Journal

But only after, say, X amount of days so as to prevent "Oh, fuck, I meant/was supposed to archive/star/whatever that but my finger slipped/tablet glitch-jumped/I forgot I also had this important info there..."?

Starred convos which receive replies should perhaps change the color of the notification bubble, or similar...

@Shienvien

It would be a nice compromise to let trash items decay and then ultimately disappear. Kinda like an operating system's trash bin but with no explicit "empty trash" button.

And yeah, maybe something like this:



The query was complex enough for me to hold off on it.

Mahz's Dev Journal

Update: Ultra-basic convo folder system

I'll just release my progress so far in case I get interrupted for the rest of the day.



It's four basic folders that you can move your convos into. For now, it's purely for your own organization and filtering purposes.

No way to mass-move them yet, but you can move them individually using a form you'll find inside each convo:



Until I make it easy to mass-move, I recommend starting off by starring the convos you care about since it's easier than going the opposite route of trashing the ones you don't.

In this initial release, the folders don't have any real significance beyond being simple filters.

- INBOX is the default folder that convos get put into.
- STARRED is good as a quick-dial system. It's a good idea to move the convos you're engaged in here so you can quickly find them and so that you don't forget about them.
- ARCHIVE is intended for convos that have pretty much run their course. This is where most convos should go once you're done with them: they're there if you need to reference them, but otherwise they're out of your way.
- TRASH is reserved for convos you don't even want attached to your account anymore.

Eventually I would like to think of how to give each folder more significance. For example, if you move a convo to the trash, it should actually get deleted.

Danger Zone: I didn't bother optimizing the feature for performance, so I may roll it back if it looks like it'll be a problem. I also didn't actually test it from any other account, so lemme know about bugs as usual.

Post Deletion?

@ShadoWolf k, got it.

Mahz's Dev Journal

@Ellri I might be able to get my hands on an Android tablet on Monday. I really want to figure this problem out!

Update: I've finally started working on convo organization tools.

Here's the prototype I have so far:



Gonna try to pump out the ugliest + simplest implementation that gets the job done.

In the past, the few times I started on this feature I'd go down the rabbit hole of custom folders and the concept of leaving conversations. Would get too complex and then my weekend would run out.