@Replies Are Here!
It is a common occurrence within groups that someone wants to check in with an update that is specifically targeted at another group member. The web standard for such targeted messages is the @ reply. This catches the attention of the person the message is targeted at and allows mini-conversations within a group.
Before now, these @ replies were difficult to do in Status, and people were resorting to manually typing them in when necessary. Now, each message (that isn’t yours) has has a [REPLY] link below it allowing you to reply directly to that message! When you click the reply link, a special pop-up comes up for you to enter your message into. This is what it looks like:
This was a bit of a challenging feature to implement into Status because of the fact that Status does not use user names. Each user uses their real first name, which is not necessarily unique. Therefore, replying to “@Chris” isn’t quite going to cut it, since there may be more than one “Chris” in a group. We solved the problem by including the reply links as a part of each individual status. Each of those reply links is unique, and ties the reply message to the original status message. We think it works great!
Actually, this system is much smarter than reply systems you will find on other services. For example, on Twitter, @replies are directed at individual users, but you have no way of knowing which message someone was replying to. In Status, you can quickly see which message is being replied to by clicking on the @name link.
You will also notice that this new feature comes along with a bit of a user interface refresh. The new replies needed a whole view of their own, so you can view every message directed at you. Instead of forcing that into the bar that we were using to switch views before, we decided to move it into the sidebar. You will now find your different view choices in the sidebar:
In fact, the whole sidebar got a bit of a face-lift. The navigational stuff was moved into the header:
The lighter gray bar at the bottom will only be visible to you if you are currently in a group that you are an administrator of.
While we are at it…
Deleting of statuses is back. We originally had deletion, but removed it for awhile to better comply with business regulations (you know, accountability and all) while we figured out a better solution. Now we do. An admin of a group can control whether members of their group can or cannot delete messages. You’ll find this option under your Group Details link.
One more thing… Check out this screencast for creating a Status Menu Bar Application for OS X using Fluid.
