Notifier experiment: highlight recent messages

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UPDATE 2: This is now in the release version and enabled by default. To disable this feature, untick "Advanced > Highlight recent messages in the Message Center" in the options page. Apparently, some people were contacting support regarding this and dA contacted me in turn. Sorry for the confusion.

UPDATE: I pushed this feature out for Beta testing, which is going to go live in under an hour. Beta-testers, please give me your feedback! I also plan to make Beta test public - stay tuned for an announcement.

Hello, fellow deviants!

I've been toying with the idea of highlighting fresh messages in the Message Center.

Previously, I already made one step in that direction by appending the number of unread messages to message center headers. This had two big downsides:

  • It can only show what's new since last time you checked. If new messages arrive and you refresh the page, old batch would be considered read, even if you didn't pay attention to it.
  • It doesn't mesh well with stacks. If you have 10 new deviations, how many stacks contain new items?


I made a quick prototype that highlights message center messages based on their age:

MC colorize by logeg

For the curious, the opacity formula (subject to further tweaks) is inverse proportion, with:

  • Brightest if newer than 5 minutes
  • Tapers off to 10% if aged 3 days
  • Cuts off at 5%


So, discuss. Do you like that feature? Would you like to see it implemented? If not, why? How can it be improved?
© 2014 - 2024 dANotifier
Comments14
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guzu's avatar
Great idea! 
Alright, I think I have few thoughts about improving it:
"It can only show what's new since last time you checked. If new messages arrive and you refresh the page, old batch would be considered read, even if you didn't pay attention to it."
I think this part could be cancelled and get integrate with the opacity formula. 
So, if first access to page, color would be different (Yellow for example). If page refreshed, the opacity formula would stay, but with DeviantArt colors (The greenish original color).