"Activity"-like view of 1st page of Inbox, in a dropdown, from Navigation Strip

[solarbird]

Title:
"Activity"-like view of 1st page of Inbox, in a dropdown, from Navigation Strip

Area:
navigation strip, messaging

Summary:
It is currently very easy to configure your Inbox to serve as an activity notification hub. It would be very useful to have a shorted version of the first page of that Inbox be accessible via a dropdown on the Navigation Strip, and allow some manipulation of your Inbox via that dropdown.

Description:
Each line of the proposed dropdown would contain a one line description of the activity. (N replied to [your post|comment], N messaged you, subject "", N posted to group X, and so on). Each entry would contain an "x" dismissal button which would delete the notification from both the Inbox and the dropdown. Clicking on an individual entry outside of the dismissal button would take you to the item about which you are being notified - the message, the comment made, etc - and mark it as read. A "see all" entry at the bottom of the dropdown could take you to the current Inbox view. Currently, using the Inbox as a notification centre results in large numbers of page swaps and reloads, as you go from Inbox to post to Inbox to reply form to Inbox etc., etc., etc., with mark-as-read and delete-item as separate actions across separate pages. Further, it is difficult to maintain (de-clutter, etc) without engaging in that maintenance as a separate task. As a result, those of us who have this issue end up with over-full Inboxes that we tend to bulk-delete. This suggested feature would allow us both to use our Inbox more easily and maintain it more effectively, resulting in improved usability of the service and - hopefully - fewer notifications being stored on the servers.

Poll #18205 "Activity"-like view of 1st page of Inbox, in a dropdown, from Navigation Strip

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 37

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
9 (24.3%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
5 (13.5%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
6 (16.2%)

(I have no opinion)
17 (45.9%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[solarbird]

Wow, yeah, that's a lot better just from a baseline lineup standpoint, and with a bunch less CSS than I had to use to make that happen. Nice!

I did a bunch of other stuff too (see my journal if you want, I've got the navbar on - or see the .png files I linked) but yours by itself is a big basic clarity improvement.

[marahmarie]

Thanks! I just re-did the code - after not updating it for a while, then comparing it to your .png files tonight, I decided it Needed Things, so now it has them (I took out some code, too - mostly stuff that wasn't useful).

For comparison (if you like), the new code is now:

.logged-out.has-navstrip #lj_controlstrip_userpic{visibility:hidden;margin-left:-6.6em} #lj_controlstrip{background:#353533;padding:.5em 0;border-bottom:1px solid#444;} #lj_controlstrip a{text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid#B82E2E} #lj_controlstrip a:hover{color:#888!important;border-bottom:1px solid #fff!important} #lj_controlstrip input,#lj_controlstrip select,#lj_controlstrip_login,#lj_controlstrip_actionlinks,#lj_controlstrip_user, #lj_controlstrip_userpic a,#lj_controlstrip_userpic a:hover,.cutTagControls a:hover,.icon-links a:hover{border:0;border-radius:7%} #lj_controlstrip td{font-size:.8em;line-height:1.5} #lj_controlstrip_userpic{margin:.6em 0 0 0} #lj_controlstrip #Logout, #lj_controlstrip #Login{display:inline-block;font-size:1em!important;margin:0 1.15em .3em .7em;padding:.2em} #lj_controlstrip_statustext{display:inline-table;font-size:1.1em;margin-bottom:.5em} #lj_controlstrip_search{display:block;margin-top:-.2em}#lj_controlstrip_search input{margin-bottom:.5em} #lj_controlstrip_search .select{padding:.3em}#lj_controlstrip_search .select + input{padding:.2em!important}

[solarbird]

I like your smaller icons - the icon/text size in the standard is a problem, I solved it by going larger text, you solved it the other way. Both work tho'.

On Firefox right now the search text entry field is hidden behind the search-type dropdown.

[marahmarie]

I wonder if that's only in Firefox (that's what I'm using, too)? I thought DW hid it (when I remove my CSS, DW seems to also hide it). I'll check it out in other browsers, just to see.

[solarbird]

I have it in mine, and when I view your page in my style, it reappears, and it's visible on the system default CSS as well.

(This is latest Firefox on latest formerly-OSX-now-MacOS.)

[marahmarie]

Yeah (Firefox on Win10 here), you're right.

The funny thing is, I had the search text field in there until the last moment (I had to add it, because I noticed it was missing, myself), then took it out when I thought DW wasn't using it, either (apparently they are; it's something else in my CSS obscuring it. I have that problem with my code, a lot: I need search teams to dig through it sometimes just to find what went wrong/missing/is making something look funky).

I like how you nudged search all the way to the right. Which is making me think I want to go for dividing the page into thirds and spreading the three sections more evenly (I think I only had them smashed together to make it easier to style for mobile).

And I see we both have those tiny, tiny text fields for log-in username/password when I suppress cookies to give me the logged-out view. I guess that's native to the DW design, but I'd like to work on making those boxes bigger when I get another good chunk of time.

ETA: Put the search field back in and widened the username and password boxes while I was at it. I didn't think those would wrap* on mobile, but they do! *so happy*

*Of course, now I'll have to test tonight's changes in nine browsers across three phones, two laptops and our tablets, but wheeee, it's a start! )