long chat and log message popups obscure the status page

[dd1]

long chat and log message popups obscure contents of the status page, for example, the "status" menu item becomes invisible, unclickable until message popup is dismissed. I think midas is not a video game, not facebook and intrusive message popups are not welcome. K.O.

[Stefan Ritt]

I will limit the message text to one line. The reason why there is a message text in the header is the following: In old midas, people often overlook important messages or even alarms if they don't watch the status page. Could be a custom page which does not render any alarm. In the past, we missed important things. Therefore I put this now into the new header line, so that we see this on every page. If people use the standard header in their custom page like

<div id="mheader"></div>
<div id="msidenav"></div>

then these custom pages will inherit this functionality as well.

[dd1]

I have now used this for 3 days and find the constantly popping messages highly distractive. Most messages are just messages about general going-on things, completely pointless to pop them into my face. For things that must pop into user eyes, one should use alarms. Let's let messages be just messages. K.O.

[Stefan Ritt]

Disagree. In our experiments we set up messages not for every-day notifications, but only when something happens. So I want to see every message. I know other experiments use messages more loosely, so will make this configurable through the config page. Have a switch for INFO, ERROR, CHAT messages and alarms (with higher priority).

[dd1]

Ok, now I can inject messages using odbedit, and confirm that long messages obscure at the least the "status" button in the menu. This is one-line long messages. And of course length is relative to the browser window width and to the display width. Also messages push the time-date display out of place. K.O.

[Stefan Ritt]

Do you read what I write? Above I wrote "I will limit the message text to one line". I mean I truncate the message in such a way that it only occupies a single line in the browser (not in the terminal or whatever) and does not push away any other element. Don't worry how I do that, but I will do it in such a way that it works on all browsers and window sizes. Just be patient!

[Stefan Ritt]

I implemented the message truncation as advertised. Give it a try and close the issue if it's satisfactory.

[dd1]

thanks. much better now. still not perfect, now the message text is 33% the timestamp, 33% "[fectrl,INFO]", 33% actual message text. (quite often, actual message text is completely truncated away. Ouch. K.O.

[dd1]

bug as reported is fixed. the "status" menu button is no longer obscured. K.O.

[Stefan Ritt]

I agree that the timestamp and [fectrl,INFO] is inefficient if the message gets truncated. I propose a modification which shows a short message (which fits on the line) completely (i.e. with timestamp and type), and a long message which would get truncated gets displayed without the timestamp and the type. If one hovers over the message, then the timestamp and type gets shown in a tooltip, and if one clicks on the message one is taken to the message page to see it in full glory. Does this make sense?

[Stefan Ritt]

I re-opened this issue in the hope that people get notified about this entry. I added code to remove the message timestamp and type if the message is too long to fit into the header line. You can now also click on the message which brings you straight to the message page. Please close this issue again if this is satisfactory.

[dd1]

confirmed fixed. K.O.