Notification improvement suggestions

[Moonzy]

I've been missing notifications, so I have a few suggestions to improve it.

 

1) different background color for the unread notification

justification: sometimes it's (1), but when i click on it, there's 2 new notification (there's a new notification between it pinging me and me opening notification to load up)

bold text is not obvious enough, in my opinion. a different BG color would make it very obvious

make it optional so people wont be triggered by it.

 

2) allow notification to be marked as (unread) and remain on top even after i open the notification bar

justification: yes, i can open new tabs, but it gets real messy real quick, not to mention that the forum is buggy when you open more than 1 tab at a time (ghost notif, editor not saving right etc)

sometimes I want to deal with 1 at a time.

if possible, mark it as unread would make it remain as "unread" until i click on it instead of marking as read if i manually mark it as unread

 

3) allow option to auto mark certain type of notification as unread automatically (until i click on it)

ie, xxx quoted me <--- keep as unread

xxx reacted me <--- mark as read as soon as notification bar is opened.

justification: not all notifications are important, and i don't want to turn off reaction notif because sometimes people use it as a notification that they replied (whether intentional or not)

there are times that i went back to a thread that OP didnt quote/mention because someone else reacted to my reply (whether it's to notify me or not, i thank ye)

 

4) allow customisation of notification bg color based on notification type

justification: same as above, to filter out important vs less important notif

 

5) show how many notification I have when the notification is showing (after clicking on it to expand)

justification: sometimes it's (1), but when i click on it, there's 2 new notification, so if it shows 2 when i open it, i'll know to check for two notif

though colored BG is good enough, but this is an alternative

[Kanna]

Ahem lemme add (notification overrides for different people you follow)

[LogicalDrm]

Considering the new version with new theme is around the corner... But also that any theme customization could be done with browser addons. I don't know if things will be changing much with new version, but most of the color customization options aren't really what forums devs (IPS) are interested in.

[colonel_mortis]

1 hour ago, Moonzy said:

1) different background color for the unread notification

justification: sometimes it's (1), but when i click on it, there's 2 new notification (there's a new notification between it pinging me and me opening notification to load up)

bold text is not obvious enough, in my opinion. a different BG color would make it very obvious

make it optional so people wont be triggered by it.

Maybe your bold is weaker than mine, but it's fairly differentiated to me

The night theme is a bit less obvious than the day theme, so I guess that's the issue here. Would it help if the unread ones were brighter white, eg

 

1 hour ago, Moonzy said:

2) allow notification to be marked as (unread) and remain on top even after i open the notification bar

justification: yes, i can open new tabs, but it gets real messy real quick, not to mention that the forum is buggy when you open more than 1 tab at a time (ghost notif, editor not saving right etc)

sometimes I want to deal with 1 at a time.

if possible, mark it as unread would make it remain as "unread" until i click on it instead of marking as read if i manually mark it as unread

That's the first time anyone has reported any of those issues in relation to opening multiple tabs at once.

 

In theory, the database would support marking notifications as unread, but in practice making that work would require a reasonable amount of front and back end infrastructure work. Maybe at some point (I have noted it down), but not in the immediate future.

 

What do you mean by "and remain on top"?

1 hour ago, Moonzy said:

3) allow option to auto mark certain type of notification as unread automatically (until i click on it)

ie, xxx quoted me <--- keep as unread

xxx reacted me <--- mark as read as soon as notification bar is opened.

justification: not all notifications are important, and i don't want to turn off reaction notif because sometimes people use it as a notification that they replied (whether intentional or not)

there are times that i went back to a thread that OP didnt quote/mention because someone else reacted to my reply (whether it's to notify me or not, i thank ye)

Anything involving customization is hard, and making it only selectively mark notifications as read when you open the dropdown is hard. There probably is something to be said for not immediately marking notifications as read when you open the list, but I don't think something that involves lots of per-user customisation is going to be the answer.

1 hour ago, Moonzy said:

4) allow customisation of notification bg color based on notification type

justification: same as above, to filter out important vs less important notif

Customisation based on data that isn't currently exposed to the front end is even harder. This probably won't happen.

1 hour ago, Moonzy said:

5) show how many notification I have when the notification is showing (after clicking on it to expand)

justification: sometimes it's (1), but when i click on it, there's 2 new notification, so if it shows 2 when i open it, i'll know to check for two notif

though colored BG is good enough, but this is an alternative

I'd be more interested in solving the root cause than trying to stick a number on as a patch fix.

[Moonzy]

1 minute ago, colonel_mortis said:

The night theme is a bit less obvious than the day theme, so I guess that's the issue here. Would it help if the unread ones were brighter white, eg

yea bold on night theme is very unnoticeable, and im using 768p monitor so im not sure if that's making it worse

hmm, from your photo i can hardly see the difference between the before and after in term of color, unfortunately

but yea one is brighter if i looked real close

i can see the bold if i stared at it, but i dont really stare at my notif that hard, i just open it, check the notif based on the number it shows, and that's where the problem comes, when the number on the bell isnt what's in it (explained at last point of this reply)

 

2 minutes ago, colonel_mortis said:

That's the first time anyone has reported any of those issues in relation to opening multiple tabs at once.

when opening multiple tabs, sometimes some tab will have (1) and others have none

and sometimes the notification bell will light up for 1 second (with the number of unread notif before i read it) then dims away 

 

as for editor not saving, it happens a few times when im typing a post and trying to quote cross page, i will get an empty editor once i change page, when i have another tab open. the editor wont be cleared if i only have 1 tab.

 

6 minutes ago, colonel_mortis said:

What do you mean by "and remain on top"?

say

A

B

C

D

 

i mark A and D as unread, next time i open it it'll be

A

D

B

C

 

7 minutes ago, colonel_mortis said:

In theory, the database would support marking notifications as unread, but in practice making that work would require a reasonable amount of front and back end infrastructure work. Maybe at some point (I have noted it down), but not in the immediate future.

 

8 minutes ago, colonel_mortis said:

Anything involving customization is hard, and making it only selectively mark notifications as read when you open the dropdown is hard.

hmm... it's only an issue if i receive multiple quotes at once, normally when i help a few threads

it's a very niche case so dont have to implement it if it's not very easy.

 

9 minutes ago, colonel_mortis said:

I'd be more interested in solving the root cause than trying to stick a number on as a patch fix.

i believe what's happening is the push notification happens, i see (1)

i finish replying, (then another notif appear but not pushed yet)

then i open the notif bell, it loads the latest notifs (2, 1 pushed 1 not pushed) while still showing (1) from the push notif

so the loaded notif have 2 unread, but i only see (1), so i may miss the first notif since i only look at the top notif due to (1)

[colonel_mortis]

3 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

yea bold on night theme is very unnoticeable, and im using 768p monitor so im not sure if that's making it worse

hmm, from your photo i can hardly see the difference between the before and after in term of color, unfortunately

but yea one is brighter if i looked real close

i can see the bold if i stared at it, but i dont really stare at my notif that hard, i just open it, check the notif based on the number it shows, and that's where the problem comes, when the number on the bell isnt what's in it (explained at last point of this reply)

Hmm, with the change it's about 25% brighter (V 82% to 100%), so it should be noticeable.

4 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

when opening multiple tabs, sometimes some tab will have (1) and others have none

 

Oh yeah that, yeah it leaves a lot to be desired but it's not something that we can control.

5 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

and sometimes the notification bell will light up for 1 second (with the number of unread notif before i read it) then dims away 

The number is 0. Yes, it's weird and unnecessary.

5 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

as for editor not saving, it happens a few times when im typing a post and trying to quote cross page, i will get an empty editor once i change page, when i have another tab open. the editor wont be cleared if i only have 1 tab.

That should only be if you have multiple tabs of the same topic (because the editors are overwriting each other).

 

I take your point about opening a tab for each notification being suboptimal though.

 

6 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

say

A

B

C

D

 

i mark A and D as unread, next time i open it it'll be

A

D

B

C

 

Notifications have to be chronologically ordered, so that won't be possible.

 

7 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

i believe what's happening is the push notification happens, i see (1)

i finish replying, (then another notif appear but not pushed yet)

then i open the notif bell, it loads the latest notifs (2, 1 pushed 1 not pushed) while still showing (1) from the push notif

so the loaded notif have 2 unread, but i only see (1), so i may miss the first notif since i only look at the top notif due to (1)

Yeah, but I would prefer to try and solve the issue with unread notifications being indistinguishable rather than by trying to hack around with the count badge.

[Moonzy]

47 minutes ago, colonel_mortis said:

Hmm, with the change it's about 25% brighter (V 82% to 100%), so it should be noticeable.

yea but if your eyes only focus on the first notif, the 2nd being bolded wouldnt be obvious unless you look at it

the problem is with the bell count, imo (tunnel vision)

 

47 minutes ago, colonel_mortis said:

The number is 0. Yes, it's weird and unnecessary.

not necessarily 0, from my experience

it's whatever is the number before i read it

so (2), or (1), then fades away real quick

nothing major, just distracting

 

47 minutes ago, colonel_mortis said:

That should only be if you have multiple tabs of the same topic (because the editors are overwriting each other)

i see, yea i guessed that but i closed all other tabs when im working cross pages now

 

47 minutes ago, colonel_mortis said:

Yeah, but I would prefer to try and solve the issue with unread notifications being indistinguishable rather than by trying to hack around with the count badge

having a false number makes me not read the lower notif though, which is an issue

on the other hand, i could've paid more attention to it.

[Moonzy]

update: noticed something strange

the bell says (2) at first, when I opened it for the first time, I only see 1 notification

Spoiler

the 8 minute ago notification

but @wkdpaul actually reacted to 2 of my posts within this time

Spoiler

 

2nd link bugged, edited out

 

refreshing the page does not bring up 2nd notif, neither does loading it on my PC (noticed from phone)

is this a new feature or?

it would be bad if it's missing notification now

 

edit, eh i cant link to the bugged notification post...?

it's this one, 4 posts down from the one before

Spoiler

 

edit 2: all of the sudden, it works, but the notif is still missing

[colonel_mortis]

8 hours ago, Moonzy said:

update: noticed something strange

the bell says (2) at first, when I opened it for the first time, I only see 1 notification

  Hide contents

the 8 minute ago notification

but @wkdpaul actually reacted to 2 of my posts within this time

  Hide contents

 

2nd link bugged, edited out

 

refreshing the page does not bring up 2nd notif, neither does loading it on my PC (noticed from phone)

is this a new feature or?

it would be bad if it's missing notification now

 

edit, eh i cant link to the bugged notification post...?

it's this one, 4 posts down from the one before

  Hide contents

 

edit 2: all of the sudden, it works, but the notif is still missing

Most likely the react was either revoked and reissued, or the type was changed - that bug should be fixed in the next update.