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Will there be an inbox?

feature-request completed add tag

Monica

When I started using TopAnswers I noticed, and was initially confused by, the inbox for chat replies.  At the time I assumed it was a general inbox; all I'd done so far was chat, so it made sense that it was full of chat stuff.

I've now posted some questions, some of which have gotten answers, but I've seen no notifications.  Should I have?  Or haven't we built an inbox for Q&A responses yet?  If we haven't, will we?

As the body of questions grows, and also as time goes on and questions can thus be inactive long enough to be out of view, being alerted that somebody has provided an answer seems pretty important.

Top Answer

James Douglas

Similar to [@Caleb's list](/meta?q=240#a182), you will now get notifications:

* When someone edits a question  of yours
* When someone edits an answer of yours
* When someone edits a question you are subscribed to
* When someone edits an answer on a question you are subscribed to
* When someone posts an answer on a question you are subscribed to

You are automatically subscribed to questions posted by you, but you can unsubscribe by clicking the bell icon at the bottom right:

![Screenshot 2019-12-05 at 19.00.16.png](/image?hash=cbb421d4d133afb3c3c6d9dccb0d06b20352827d657febe326ab04e912496842)

and you can subscribe to anyone's post or re-subscribe to your own by clicking the empty bell icon:

![Screenshot 2019-12-05 at 18.59.41.png](/image?hash=5d4af60344b7efc4647697d4a828c7a8eb3405254d3db22ab08b75f0b06374ef)

Answer #2

Caleb

Yes, the notification system needs to be expanded to handle more notifications. Perhaps each notification type should be optional, but probably defaulting them all to "on" is best.

* New answer to question
* Any own post edited by other user
* Edited answers to question (something SE doesn't do, maybe default to off)
* New participant in chat where you have a post, because they don't always ping the post owner... (default to off?)

Yes. The way the other posts (answers, question lists) display with padding all around is better. They should have exactly the same padding, the rhythm is important. The question could be emphasized and distinguished from answer posts some other way, but not by aligning them differently in the same frame space.

I actually don't agree that it's adverse at all. The question lists page has some padding, and all the answers do — and both those places _look and feel_ better than the one place that is a problem: the question post section of question pages.

I rather do that just for those that need it as it adversely affects the look of the page to have extra space there — I wonder if there is any way to detect in browser whether the hover-only scrollbars are active.

Easy: give the zone where the scrollbar might be on some systems some padding. Right now there are about 2 pixels where the button can be hit without covering it up. The potentially covered space should never have anything you need to touch.

I'm not sure what to do about this tbh, until we get an idea how many are affected by the issue. Am I right to assume it is actualy possible for you to subscribe, it just you have to be careful not to trigger the scrollbar appearance on hover?

Hey @James! The subscribe feature is great, thanks. The button itself is pretty hard to hit though. At least on Firefox it's a tiny thing right on the edge of a scrollable area and is actually covered by the scrollbar that pops up when bringing the mouse to bear anywhere near that edge.

@Caleb I'd say every one of those should be turned on by default, as they all are really sensible. Also I think there should be a method to subscribe to a message even though one hasn't contributed to it.

2 Answers